APPEAL, in law. In the old English common law the term "appeal" was used to describe a process peculiar to English criminal procedure. It was a right of prosecution possessed as a personal privilege by a party individually aggrieved by a felony, a privilege of which the crown could not directly or indirectly deprive him, since he could use it alike when the prisoner was tried and acquitted, and when he was convicted and pardoned. It was chiefly known in practice as the privilege of the nearest relation of a murdered person. When in 1729 (after Colonel Oglethorpe's inquiry and report on the London prisons) Banbridge and other gaolers were indicted for their treatment of prisoners, but were acquitted for deficiency of evidence, appeals for murder were freely brought by relatives of deceased prisoners. In the case of Slaughterford (1708) the accused was charged with murdering a woman whom he had seduced; the evidence was very imperfect, and he was acquitted on indictment. But public indignation being aroused by the atrocities alleged to have been perpetrated, an appeal was brought, and on conviction he was hanged, as his execution was a privilege belonging to the prosecutor, of which the crown could not deprive him by a pardon. In 1818 an appeal was ingeniously met by an offer of battle, since if the appellee were an able-bodied man he had the choice between combat or a jury (see WAGER). This neutralizing of one obsolete and barbarous process by another called the attention of the legislature to the subject, and appeal in criminal cases, along with trial by battle, was abolished in 1819. The history of this appeal is fully dealt with in Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law_, 1898.
In its usual modern sense the term appeal is applied to the proceeding by which the decision of a court of justice is brought for review before another tribunal of higher authority. In Roman jurisprudence it was used in this and in other significations; it was sometimes equivalent to prosecution, or the calling up of an accused person before a tribunal where the accuser appealed to the protection of the magistrate against injustice or oppression. The derivation from _appellare_ ("call") suggests that its earliest meaning was an urgent outcry or prayer against injustice. During the republic the magistrate was generally supreme within his sphere, and those who felt themselves outraged by injustice threw themselves on popular protection by _provocatio_, instead of looking to redress from a higher official authority. Under the empire different grades of jurisdiction were established, and the ultimate remedy was an appeal to the emperor; thus Paul, when brought before Festus, appealed unto Caesar. Such appeals were, however, not heard by the emperor in person but by a supreme judge representing him. In the _Corpus Juris_ the appeal to the emperor is called indiscriminately _appellatio_ and _provocatio_. A considerable portion of the 49th book of the _Pandects_ is devoted to appeals; but little of the practical operation of the system is to be deduced from the propositions there brought together.