Record

Record, as a legal term, is used in the United Kingdom to signify anything entered in the rolls of a court, and especially the formal statements or pleadings of parties in a litigation. In general the rule is well settled that the pleadings which make up the record do not enter into details of the evidence, but merely set forth the conclusions or inferences, leaving the details of evidence to be supplied at the trial before a jury, or, if there is no jury, at the hearing before the judge or court. One of the incidents of a Court of Record is that the court or judge can commit for contempt any person who insults the court or wilfully obstructs the business. A trial by record means that one of the parties has set up some former decision of the court, while the other denies that such a decision ever existed; whereupon the only mode of solving the question is by producing the record of the former action, and so settling the dispute. In Scotland the closing of the record is a step which requires the sanction of the judge, who closes the record after each party has said all he wishes to say by way of statement and answer.