Bar

[L. Lat. barra.] In practice. The place in court which counsellors or advocates occupy while addressing the court or jury, and where prisoners are brought for the purpose of being arraigned or sentenced; usually designated by a material enclosure of some kind, to which the name of a bar may with more or less propriety be given. Dr. Webster defines it to be, "the railing which encloses the place which counsel occupy in courts of justice." According to this definition, all the counsel in court properly sit or plead within the bar. In the English courts, on the other hand, many of the counsel, including the great body of barristers (who hence derive their name,) sit without the bar, and are for this reason called utter or outer barristers (q. v.); the space within being a privileged place allotted to king's or queen's counsel, Serjeants, and others having privilege or pre-audience.

3 Bl. Com. 28. 3 Steph. Com. 387.

Wharton's Lex. voc.

Barrister.

The term bar, as expressive of a material enclosure, is used with much more distinctness in English than in American practice. The presence of the court, either actual or constructive. A trial at bar (q. v.) is a trial had before the full court in term, in contradistinction to the ordinary trial at nisi prius, (q. v.) The members of the legal profession, collectively, are figuratively called the bar, from the place which they usually occupy in court. The same figurative use of the term has led in England to the distinction between practitioners at the bar, including barristers in the proper sense, and practitioners under the bar, comprising special pleaders and conveyancers. Warren's Law Studies, 1, note. (Am. ed.) Attornies are considered as being always present in court.

1 Tidd's Pr. 80.