COURT HAND
court hand. Hist. A script style used by English court clerks, the words being abbreviated and contracted according to a set of common principles for maintaining brevity and uniformity. ? This type of writing, along with the use of Latin (except for technical or untranslatable phrases), was banned early in the 18th century in an effort to make court records more accessible to nonlawyers.¡°[T]echnical Latin continued in use from the time of its first introduction, till the subversion of our ancient con-stitution under Cromwell; when, among many other innovations in the law, some for the better and some for the worse, the language of our records was altered and turned into English. But, at the restoration of king Charles, this novelty was no longer countenanced; the practicers finding it very difficult to express themselves so concisely or significantly in any other language but the Latin. And thus it continued without any sensible inconvenience till about the year 1730, when it was again thought proper that the proceedings at law should be done into English, and it was accordingly so ordered by statute 4 Geo. II. c. 26…. What is said of the alteration of language by the statute 4 Geo. II. c. 26 will hold equally strong with respect to the prohibition of using the ancient immutable court hand in writing the records of other legal proceedings; whereby the reading of any record that is forty years old is now become the object of science, and calls for the help of an antiquarian.¡± 3 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 322¨C23 (1768).
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