prima facie

Prima facie is the Latin phrase for 'at first face' or 'on first appearance,' formed from prima, the feminine ablative singular of primus (first), and facie, the ablative singular of facies (face, appearance, form). In Roman law, facies carried the sense of the visible surface of a thing — what appears at first glance, before deeper investigation. The ablative case here indicates manner or circumstance: the thing appears, on first face, to be so. The phrase entered English legal vocabulary through the Latin-saturated language of English common law, where it appears in judicial decisions and legal treatises from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

In English law, prima facie describes evidence or a case that is sufficient on its face to establish a fact or raise a presumption unless rebutted. A prima facie case is one in which the party bearing the burden of proof has produced enough evidence that, if believed and uncontradicted, would be sufficient to support a verdict in their favor. The doctrine governs the preliminary stage of litigation — the judge's assessment of whether the plaintiff has produced enough evidence to put the defendant to proof, or whether the case should be dismissed before it reaches trial.

Prima facie became particularly important in American civil rights and employment discrimination law. In the 1973 Supreme Court case McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, the Court established a framework for employment discrimination cases in which the plaintiff must first make out a prima facie case of discrimination before the burden of production shifts to the employer to articulate a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for the challenged action. The McDonnell Douglas framework, which turns on the concept of a prima facie showing, remains the dominant framework for individual disparate treatment claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Outside the courtroom, prima facie has been adopted into philosophical and general discourse as a term for an apparent truth or obligation that holds unless defeated by stronger countervailing considerations. The philosopher W.D. Ross introduced the term 'prima facie duties' in The Right and the Good (1930) to describe moral obligations that are binding in the absence of competing obligations — the duty to keep a promise is prima facie binding, though it may be overridden if keeping the promise would cause great harm. This philosophical usage has made prima facie a standard term in moral philosophy, extending the Latin legal phrase into ethical theory.