Rule

n.

1.

A formal regulation agreed upon or prescribed by authority: as rules of a society or company, general rules of court.

2.

A decision, direction, mandate, or order of court; generally, one less solemn and forma] than a decree or judgment, and made incidentally iu the progress of a cause, or upon some interlocutory proceeding. In this use, a rule is usually a direction made in writing, and a ruling is 3. decision orally made, as in excluding evidence. Thus a judge grants a rule to show cause, or makes erroneous rulings on a trial; a party serves a rule to plead, or excepts to a ruling against him. Connected with this sense is

Rule

r.: to decide an incidental point; to give a direction, or determine an interlocutory question or motion, either orally or in writing; to command or require by order of court, as to rule iu favor of evidence offered, or to rule a sheriff to return a writ. It is worthy of notice that there is a tendency in the English books to use " rule " for a direction or decision made upon occasion arising in a particular cause, and "orders," for the general regulations to govern practice which are prescribed by the courts to apply in any causes; while in the United States (at least in the states following the code system), the tendency is to use " rules " in the sense of general regulations, and " order," for any decision of an application or motion in a particular cause.

Rule absolute

When a rule to show cause has been defaulted, or has been heard, and the cause shown is adjudged making a final, peremptory, unconditional order that the party do as the rule to show cause called upon him to do. A rule absolute is opposed to a rule nisi, or to show cause, and means one not open to argument. Rule of course. There are some rules which the courts authorize their officers to grant as a matter of course, without formal application being made to a judge in open court, and these are technically termed rules of course; also, in former English practice, side -bar rules, because formerly they were moved for by the attorneys at the side bar in court. Examples are the rule to plead, which was an order or command of the court requiring a defendant to plead within a specified number of days; also, the rules to reply, to rejoin, and many others, the granting of which depended upon settled rules of practice rather than upon the discretion of the courts; so that no argument or exercise of judicial decision is needed. Rule of court. A submission to arbitration, or the award of an arbitrator, is said to be made a rule of court, when a court of law or equity makes a rule that such submission or award shall be conclusive. This is authorized by statute as one way of rendering arbitrament of controversies effective and obligatory. The rules for regulating the practice of the courts, and which the judges are empowered to frame, and to put in force, as occasion may require, are termed rules of court. Courts have an inherent power to frame and establish rules; and power of this kind has been explicitly conferred by statute in several instances. Rule nisi, or rule to show cause. In English practice, an ordinary mode of invoking the authority of the court to compel a party to do some act or take some step in the cause is by taking out a rule which is expressed that he do the act or take the step desired, unless {nisi), on a certain day, he shall show cause why he should not be so required. When the day comes, if he makes default, or shows insufficient cause, the rule is made absolute; i.e., he is ordered peremptorily. If he shows cause which is sufficient, decision argued upon a rule of real-property law, which is briefly thus expressed: That wherever a man, by any gift or conveyance, takes an estate of freehold, and in the same gift or conveyance an estate is limited, either mediately or immediately, to his heirs in fee or in tail, the word heirs is a word of limitation, and not of purchase; in other words, it is to be understood as expressing the quantity of estate which the party is to take, and not as conferring any distinct estate on his heirs, or the heirs of his body, as the case may be. This doctrine is frequently mentioned in decisions on conveyancing and real-pi-operty law, as the rule in Shelley's case. Rules of the king's bench prison. Were certain limits without the walls, within which all prisoners in custody in civil actions were allowed to live, upon giving security by bond with two sufficient sureties to the marshal not to escape, and paying him a certain percentage on the amount of the debts for which they were detained.

Bagley Pract

The term corresponds to "jail liberties" or "prison bounds," used with reference to confinement of prisoners in the United States.