Writ
In its earliest form, a writ was simply a written order made by the English monarch to a specified person to undertake a specified action; for example, in the feudal era, a military summons by the king to one of his tenants-in-chief to appear dressed for battle with retinue at a specific place and time.
In the days when writing was a rare art, a writ was revered because the person receiving the command was unlikely to deny or question its legitimacy.
[6] The Curia Regis, a Latin term meaning "royal council", consisted of the King of England and his loyal advisors.
Chancery is a general term for a medieval writing office that was responsible for the production of official documents.
[8] The Lord Chancellor wrote writs on behalf of the King, maintained all official documents, and acted as the keeper of the royal seal.
[9] The writ was a unique development of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy and consisted of a brief administrative order, authenticated (innovatively) by a seal.
[10] Written in the vernacular, they generally made a land grant or conveyed instructions to a local court.
[10] William the Conqueror took over the system unchanged, but was to extend it in two ways: first, writs became mainly framed in Latin, not Anglo-Saxon; second, they covered an increasing range of royal commands and decisions.
[13] The development of writs as a means of commencing a court action was a form of "off-the-shelf" justice designed to enable the English law courts to rapidly process lawsuits by allocating each complaint form into a standard category that could be dealt with by standard procedures.
The previous system of justice at the royal court of Chancery was tailor-made to suit each case and was thus highly time-consuming.
Where a plaintiff wished to have a case heard by a local court or by the justice of an Eyre if one happened to be visiting the county, there would be no need to obtain a writ.
However, in practice, the clerks of the Chancery would use wording from previously issued writs, with suitable adjustments, often taken from reference books containing collections of forms of writ, much as in modern times, lawyers frequently use fixed precedents or boilerplate, rather than re-inventing the wording of a new legal document.
Moreover, a writ, if one could be found fitting the plaintiff's case, provided the legal means to remove the dispute from the jurisdiction of the local court, often controlled by a lesser noble, and instead have it heard by the King's judges.
The most common of the other such prerogative writs are habeas corpus, quo warranto, prohibito, mandamus, procedendo, and certiorari.
The due process for 'petitions for' such writs is not simply civil or criminal because they incorporate the presumption of non-authority so that the official who is the respondent has the burden to prove his authority to do or not do something, failing which the court has no discretion but to decide for the petitioner, who may be any person, not just an interested party.
The Constitution broadly provides for five kinds of "prerogative" writs: habeas corpus, certiorari, mandamus, quo warranto and prohibition:
