Case, in law. The most common is the 'case stated' by a magistrate raising some point of law for the decision of the Criminal Court of Appeal. This applies to the whole summary jurisdiction of the justices of the peace in England. Such appeals have been allowed in England since 1857; in Scotland only since 1875. Such cases are also stated by way of appeal under numerous special statutes, as the Registration and Customs and Excise Acts. 'Cases' are also the statements and pleadings lodged by the appellants and respondents in the House of Lords. 'Case' is also applied in the Court of Session to the printed argument which is sometimes ordered in cases of difficulty and importance. By authority of statute the courts in different parts of the United Kingdom consult each other as to points of law by means of adjusted cases. One of the points in the celebrated Orr Ewing litigation was whether the word 'cause' in the Treaty of Union meant an actual litigation, or merely a pending question of liability. In the daily language of the courts a 'case' is a previous decision of a court which is supposed to bear upon the subject of argument. The citation of cases was jealously regulated in the Roman law by Valentinian's Law of Citations; now this is left to custom and tradition. In both England and Scotland, by a valuable reform, parties are now encouraged to agree upon facts, and submit their contentions to the court in the form of a 'special case.'
In the United States, while the word case is, like cause, applied generally to every question contested in court, whether of law or equity, it also retains there, in consequence of the state of legal procedure, a limited meaning—e.g. an action of damages for tort, where the older forms are unsuitable, as an action for negligence against a corporation.