Assize. This word, literally signifying a 'sitting' or 'session,' is a term used in the principal European legal systems, and very much in the same senses in all. As is common with regard to most of our ancient legal technicality, the Latin language, in the first instance (assideo), and then the French (assis), appears to have led to its introduction into the phraseology of the law of England, and, it may be added, also of Scotland, although in the latter country it has a more limited application in judicial procedure than in England, assize being in Scotland the old technical expression for a jury. In England, this word may also signify a jury, and it is sometimes used to denote an ordinance, decree, or law. But in modern practice, it is commonly applied to the sessions or sittings of the judges of the superior law-courts, held periodically in each county, for the purpose of administering civil and criminal justice. These courts came into use in room of ancient justices in eyre, justiciarii in itinere. The Statute of Nisi Prius, in the time of Edward I., gave a general jurisdiction in civil business to the judges acting in land disputes under the Assize of Northampton in 1176. They are now appointed by commissions issued twice a year to the judges of the High Court of Justice, two judges being generally assigned to each circuit. These commissioners or judges of assize are sent twice in every year on circuits all round the kingdom to make inquiry into crimes committed in certain counties, and to hear and determine the same according to law, or to try certain civil and criminal cases which are ready for trial; and occasionally a third circuit is appointed in the course of the year, for the purpose of jail delivery. The circuits (formerly eight) are, since 1875, seven in number—Northern, North-eastern, Midland, South-eastern, Oxford, Western, and North and South Wales; and in going them, the judges or commissioners sit by virtue of four several authorities: (1) The commission of the peace, which is much the same as No. 2; (2) A commission of oyer and terminer, which applies to cases where the indictment is found before the commissioners; (3) A commission of general jail delivery, which enables them to try all persons in prison or on bail. The other authority is (4) that of nisi prius, which empowers them to try all questions of fact issuing out of the courts at Westminster that are then ripe for trial by jury. These, by the ancient course of the courts, were usually appointed to be tried at Westminster in some Easter or Michaelmas term, by a jury returned from the county wherein the cause of action arose; but with this proviso, nisi prius, unless before the day fixed the judges should come into the county in question, which in modern times they have invariably done in the vacations preceding; so that the trial has always, in fact, taken place before these judges. And now the trial is allowed to take place without the use of any such words in the process of the court, and as a matter of course, before the judges sent under commission into the several counties. The circuit system, however, does not extend to London and Middlesex, which have instead courts of nisi prius, which are held before the chief or other judge of the superior courts for the trial of civil causes, at what are called the London and Westminster Sittings; and the establishment of the Central Criminal Court has sufficiently provided for the administration of criminal justice within these districts.
The circuit courts of Justiciary in Scotland very much resemble the assizes in England, and have, in criminal matters, very much the same jurisdiction; but in civil causes their authority is practically limited to the hearing of appeals from the Small Debt Courts, although civil trials by jury in the Court of Session are occasionally set down for circuit. Scotland is divided into three circuits, the North, South, and West. Formerly there were only two courts held in the year, with an additional court at Glasgow. In 1882 it was found necessary, by Act of Adjournal following on Order of Privy-council, to provide for three additional courts in Glasgow, and two additional at Perth, Dundee, and Aberdeen.
In the sense of an ordinance or law, the term assize has various applications, although chiefly in the more ancient systems of jurisprudence. Thus, the 'Assizes' of Jerusalem were a code of feudal laws for the kingdom of Jerusalem, formed in 1099 by an assembly of the Latin barons and of the clergy and laity under Godfrey of Bouillon. Then there were in England the Assize of Bread, the Assize of the Forest, the Assize of Clarendon. The word was often applied to particular action connected with land. In the criminal procedure of Scotland, the word assize was until recently the only technical term for the jury, and is still used in that sense. See JURY TRIAL.