Reserve

!). To keep back; to withhold. Reservation: the act of keeping back or withholding; also, the clause in a conveyance or contract whereby some part of the subject-matter is kept back or withheld from the operation of the instrument. Reservation, or reserve: a portion, particularly a tract of land, kept back or withheld.

1.

The words often occur in their general sense of keeping back; as when 2. More technically, a clause of reservation, or a reservation in a deed or lease, is a clause whereby the grantor or lessor reserves, either to himself or to the lord of the fee, some money, chattel, or service, not being part of the thing granted or demised, or an appurtenant thereto. It is considered that reserva- 'lion, in the strict sense, cannot be made in favor of a stranger, although such, if attempted, might be good as a condition. And it follows from the definition that a man cannot grant an estate, and reserve part thereof, or make a feoffment in fee, and reserve a lease for life; also, that a man cannot reserve rent to his heirs without first reserving it to himself. Moreover, a reservation is often confounded with an exception: the distinction between them is said to be, that in a reservation some new hereditament is created, and that usually of an incorporeal kind; whereas in an exception a portion, as it were, of an already existing hereditament is merely withheld, or excepted, out of the conveyance. These distinctions and niceties are of less importance in American conveyancing than in English. A reservation is something taken from the whole thing covered by the general terms making the grant, and cuts down and lessens the grant from what it would be except for the reservation.

Miller v. Lapham, 44 Vt. 416.

— How far the word reserving, in a deed of an ore-bed, imports a license to enter, &(;., see Stockbridge Iron Co. v. Hudson Iron Co., 107 Mass. 290. Reserving, in a deed, may operate to create an exception, instead of a technical reservation only, if such is the evident intent. Sloan V. Lawrence Furnace Co., 29 Ohio St. 568 3. In the United States public-land laws, a reservation, sometimes also called a reserve, is a considerable portion of the public domain segregated and withheld from sale for other public uses. Thus there are military reservations, being tracts of land required for military posts; Indian reservations, which the government has set apart for the dwelling of Indian tribes; and reservations for parks, mines, &c. 4. In the practice of the courts, to reserve a point is a mode of taking the parties to the expense of a formal writ of error or appeal. Should the judge before whom a cause is tried be of opinion that a point of law made, and upon which the case depends, deserves consideration by the full court, he may reserve it, as it is called. This may be done at nisi prius, with the consent of the parties; and, when done, an agreement is usually made that the court before which the point is argued shall be in the same situation as the judge was before whom it was originally raised, and shall have power to order a verdict or nonsuit to be entered, as they may think fit. By the judicature acts, this practice is so far extended that power is given to a judge to reserve points of law at his discretion for the consideration of a divisional court; but this is not to take away or prejudice the right of any party to have the issues for trial by jury submitted and left by the judge to the jury, with a complete and proper direction upon the law and the evidence applicable to such issues. Reserving a point may also be done by the judge in a criminal case; in which case the point is left for the judgment of the court for the consideration of crown cases reserved, composed of judges from the superior courts at Westminster. This has been a method for disposing of doubtful questions of criminal law, long and frequently employed; and the reports of decisions on these questions reserved form an important body of the criminal-law reports, known as Crown Cases Reserved. This proceeding of reserving a point accomplishes, by a little diflerent method, substantially the same result as is attained under the New York code of procedure, by the step of taking a verdict subject to the opinion of the court;

— or under the practice of the United States supreme court, by what is known as a case certified.