city, town, or monastery, distinguished and protected by peculiar privileges. Spelman.
BANLIEU, or BANLIEUE. A French and Canadian law term, having the same meaning as baleuca, (q. v.)
BANNERET. See Baneret.
BANNI, or BANNITUS. In old law, one under a ban, (q. v.;) an outlaw or banished man. Britt. cc. 12, 13; Calvin.
BANNI NUPTIARUM. L. Lat. In old English law. The bans of matrimony.
BANNIMUS. We ban or expel. The form of expulsion of a member from the University of Oxford, by affixing the sentence in some public places, as a promulgation of it. Cowell.
BANNIRE AD PLACITA, AD MOLENDINUM. To summon tenants to serve at the lord's courts, to bring corn to be ground at his mill.
BANNS. See Bans of Matrimony.
BANNUM. A ban, (q. v.)
BANNUS. In old English law. A proclamation. Bannus regis; the king's proclamation, made by the voice of a hernia, forbidding all present at the trial by combat to interfere either by motion or word, whatever they might see or hear. Bract. fol. 142.
BANQUE. Fr. A bench; the table or counter of a trader, merchant, or banker. Banque route; a broken bench or counter; bankrupt.
BANS OF MATRIMONY. A public announcement of an intended marriage, required by the English law to be made in a church or chapel, during service, on three consecutive Sundays before the marriage is celebrated. The object in to afford an opportunity for any person to interpose an objection it he knows of any impediment or other just cause why the marriage should not take place. The publication of the bans may be dispensed with by procuring a special license to marry.
BANYAN. In East Indian law. A Hindoo merchant or shop-keeper. The word is used in Bengal to denote the native who manages the money concerns of a European, and sometimes serves him as an interpreter.
BAR. 1. A partition or railing running across a courtroom, intended to separate the general public from the space occupied by the judges, counsel, jury, and others concerned in the trial of a cause. In the English courts it is the partition behind which all outer-barristers and every member of the public must stand. Solicitors, being officers of the court, are admitted within it; as are also queen's counsel, barristers with patents of precedence, and serjeants, in virtue of their ranks. Parties who appear in person also are placed within the bar on the floor of the court.
2. The term also designates a particular part of the courtroom; for example, the place where prisoners stand at their trial, whence the expression "prisoner at the bar."
3. It further denotes the presence, actual or constructive, of the court. Thus, a trial at bar is one had before the full court, distinguished from a trial had before a single judge at nisi prius. So the "case at bar" is the case now before the court and under its consideration; the case being tried or argued.
4. In the practice of legislative bodies, the bar is the outer boundary of the house, and therefore all persons, not being members, who wish to address the house, or are summoned to it, appear at the bar for that purpose.
5. In another sense, the whole body of attorneys and counsellors, or the members of the legal profession, collectively, are figuratively called the "bar," from the place which they usually occupy in court. They are thus distinguished from the "bench," which term denotes the whole body of judges.
6. In the law of contracts, "bar" means an impediment, an obstacle, or preventive burrier. Thus, relationship within the prohibited degrees is a bar to marriage. In this sense also we speak of the "bar of the statute of limitations."
7. It further means that which defeats, annuls, cuts off, or puts an end to. Thus, a provision "in bar of dower" is one which has the effect of defeating or cutting off the dower-rights which the wife would otherwise become entitled to in the particular land.
8. In pleading, it denoted a special plea, constituting a sufficient answer to an action at law; and so called because it barred, i. e., prevented, the plaintiff from further prosecuting it with effect, and, if established by proof, defeated and destroyed the action altogether. Now called a special "plea in bar." See Plea in Bar.
BAR FEE. In English law. A fee taken by the sheriff, time out of mind, for every prisoner who is acquitted. Bac. Abr. "Extortion." Abolished by St. 14 Geo. III. c. 26; 55 Geo. III. c. 50; 8 & 9 Vict. c. 114.
BARAGARIA. Span. A concubine, whom a man keeps alone in his house, unconnectcd with any other woman. Las Partidas, pt. 4, tit. 14.
Baratriam committit qui propter pecuniam justitiam baractat. He is guilty of barratry who for money sells justice. Bell.
