APPEAL

In Law, 1. The removal of a cause from an inferior court to a superior. 2. An accusation of a criminal offence by one subject agaixist another. The bringing decisions of the courts of Scotland and Ireland, or the court of chancery in England, before the house of lords, is peculiarly termed an appeal in the first sense. Criminal appeals are now obsolete: those on charges not capital have long been so. Appeals of treason and of felony subsisted for a much longer period: the latter had doubtle their origin hi the early jurisprudence of the Gothic nations, by which acts of violence or injury were redeemable by a weregild or fine to the party injured or his near est relative. They were put an end to by stat. 59 G. 3. c. 46. (See Wager of Battle.) [s. 80]