writ

Writ is the past participle of the Old English wrītan — to scratch, to score, to write — which itself descends from a Proto-Germanic root meaning to carve or incise. The earliest writing was scratched into wax, bark, or stone, and the word preserved this physical sense of inscription. In Old English, a writ (gewrit) was simply a written document; but the royal chancery gave the term its specifically legal meaning: a formal written command issued by the king, sealed with the royal seal, directing someone to do or refrain from something.

The writ was the engine of English medieval administration and law. A writ could summon a defendant to court, direct a sheriff to seize property, command a jailer to produce a prisoner, or order an official to execute a judgment. Without a writ, the royal courts had no jurisdiction — a plaintiff who could not fit his grievance into one of the standard writ forms had no access to the common law system. The Register of Writs, a catalogue of approved forms, was one of the most important documents in English legal history: it defined the boundaries of what the courts could hear.

The most famous writ is the writ of habeas corpus — 'that you have the body' — which commands a jailer to bring a prisoner before a court so the lawfulness of detention can be examined. Its history runs from the thirteenth century through the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which created the enforcement mechanism that made the writ effective against the crown. When American revolutionaries enshrined habeas corpus in the Constitution, they were preserving the writ that had done more than any other to limit arbitrary detention in the English-speaking world.

Writs spread through the British Empire as the vehicle of English legal process. Colonial courts issued writs of mandamus commanding officials to perform their duties, writs of certiorari calling inferior court records before superior courts, and writs of prohibition stopping courts from exceeding their jurisdiction. These prerogative writs — now usually renamed as judicial review applications or orders — remain the mechanism by which superior courts supervise government in most common law jurisdictions. The carved command has survived its parchment.