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Originally Posted by Lawdog
What is this fascination the wackos have with Bouvier's pre-Civil War legal dictionary? That thing is so old that many modern legal concepts that we take for granted...like the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment...aren't even in there because they did not exist yet. The world can change a lot in 150 years. Would you use an Encyclopedia Britannica set that was that old?
In modern times, grand juries return either a "true bill" for an indictment or a "no bill" for failure to indict. Because of the modern, negative meaning of the term ignoramus, I doubt anyone would want to sign a document that used that word.
Pre-civil war legal dictionaries are of historical interest, and that is about it. Time to wake up and smell the 21st century, folks.
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No Hang up on my part. Let us move into the 21st Century, circa 1910 (which by the way reads identical with the 1968 version) Blacks Law Dictionary. This rendering compares the 2nd and 4th editions of Blacks.
"IGNORAMUS. Lat. "We are ignor
a n t ; " "We ignore it." Formerly the grand
jury used to write this word on bills of indictment
when, after having heard the evidence,
they thought the accusation against
the prisoner was groundless, intimating that,
though the facts might possibly be true, the
t r u th did not appear to them; but now they
usually write in English the words "Not a
true bill," or "Not found," if that is their
verdict; but they are still said to ignore the
bill. Brown."
The implication is the same. Welcome to the 21st century, and by virtue of mertensv16 having granted the title of 'Grand Jury' to the members of this forum, I guess the deliberation will continue.
Jerry Carlos