Talk:Writ

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Contents 1 Vandalism 2 Court orders 3 Dropping the Writ 4 Disuse in England

[edit] Vandalism

Removed graffiti with a reference to n*****mania dot com ~~CatCube —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.192.196.109 (talk) 17:33, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Court orders

I have twice reverted an attempt to make the definition of a writ point to "court order". This is because, in general, writs are not court orders as defined in the court order article. The best example -- and one referred to in the article -- is a writ of summons to Parliament, which is not an "official proclamation by a judge (or panel of judges)" in any sense. Its true that historically most writs originate from what might be described as a court, but that would be a mis-analysis in the modern sense of the word. So, many writs came from the chancery, but they were not made as proclamations of judges, they were administrative actions of clerks in chancery. Some writs that still exist (or existed until very recently in England and Wales) were of that kind. So many writs of execution could be obtained administratively from a court without intervention of a judge. Please do not revert again without discussion here. Francis Davey 08:18, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dropping the Writ

Help me here, I have never heard of "dropping the writ" or the need for a "writ of election" in UK general elections. The phrase never appeared in our constitutional law lectures. Does anyone have a source for it? Francis Davey 23:42, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Parliament did not necessarily meet regularly before the English Civil War. Instead, it met at the call of the sovereign. When the sovereign needed/wanted to summon parliament, he/she issued two writs: the writ of summons to the lords spiritual and temporal, which commanded them to appear in parliament, and the writ of election, which commanded the sherrifs of the counties to hold an election for members of the commons.

Nowadays, if the prime minister wants to dissolve parliament, he/she will ask the Queen after determining a date for elections. After proclaiming the dissolution, the Queen then issues the writ of election to the constituencies, which is the formal ordering of an election for MPs. The election authorities in each constituency after conducting the election make a return on the writ specifying who the MP is for the consitutency. Up until the House of Lords Act, the Queen would also issue the writ of summons to the lords spiritual and temporal, just like in the past. Today, they are only issued to the life peers, the bishops, the Earl Marshal, the Lord Great Chamberlain, and the 90 peers which actually sit.

When vacancies occur in the commons during the parliament, writs of election to fill them are issued under the advice of the Speaker of the British House of Commons.

Dropping the writ may not actually mean the issue of these writs but may refer to something else. However, these writs are issued each time parliament restructures itself. If you check out the news articles discussing the upcoming parliamentary elections in Canada, they use drop the writ all the time. It has precedent, though what it really means may be different then these legal formalities. Pmadrid 09:24, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, that is most interesting. I have had a trawl around Halsbury's Laws on the subject and when I have time will transfer some of the learning to the main article. However I am now pretty sure that "dropping the writ" isn't used in the UK any more. Google's first few pages of hits seem to be mostly colonial parliaments. As I said, it was a phrase never used in constitution lectures, so I suspect its now obsolete in the UK, albeit not in Canada. What does anyone else think? Francis Davey 22:16, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Disuse in England

The term 'writ' has now largely passed into disuse in English law.

True enough, but what might be worth mentioning is that it certainly hasn't passed into informal disuse, and nor has it disappeared from the media - partly for fairly obvious reason that "writ" is much shorter for headline-writers, but it's still seen in body text as well. This BBC story, dated 2006-05-30, is a good example. Loganberry (Talk) 12:31, 30 May 2006 (UTC)