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Mandamus definition

măn-dāməs
mandamuses
See word origin
Frequency:
(law) A writ commanding that a specified thing be done, issued by a higher court to a lower one, or to a private or municipal corporation, government agency, official, etc.
noun
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1
A writ issued by a court requiring a public official or entity to perform a duty associated with that office or entity.
noun
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A legal proceeding seeking such a writ.
noun
2
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To serve or compel with such a writ.
verb
2
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(informal) To serve with or command by such a writ.
verb
1
0
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A writ issued by a court to compel a public official (including the judge of a lesser court) to perform a task or duty.
noun
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(law) A common law prerogative writ that compels a court or government officer to perform mandatory or purely ministerial duties correctly.
noun
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Other Word Forms

Noun

Singular:
mandamus
Plural:
mandamuses

Origin of mandamus

  • Latin mandāmus we order (used in such a writ) first person pl. present tense of mandāre to order man-2 in Indo-European roots

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

  • From Latin mandāmus (“we command").

    From Wiktionary

Mandamus Sentence Examples

  • The court has appellate jurisdiction only, except for the power to issue writs of mandamus, quo warranto, certiorari, injunction and other original and remedial writs.

  • Ultimately the bishop of Quebec, unable to get a mandamus from the English privy council to dig him up, solemnly deconsecrated the ground down to the estimated depth of the lid of the wife's coffin.

  • This recourse in England sometimes took the form of the appeal to the king given by the Constitutions of Clarendon, just mentioned, and later by the acts of Henry VIII.; sometimes that of suing for writs of prohibition or mandamus, which were granted by the king's judges, either to restrain excess of jurisdiction, or to compel the spiritual judge to exercise jurisdiction in cases where it seemed to the temporal court that he was failing in his duty.

  • English law has largely moulded, for example, criminal and commercial law and the law of evidence; the development of the law of corporations, damages, prohibitions and such extraordinary remedies as the mandamus has been very similar to that in other states; while in the fusion of law and equity, and the law of successions, family relations, &c., the civil law of Spain and France has been unaffected.

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