Word
Habeas Corpus
A legal procedure for asking a court to examine whether someone's detention is lawful
Examples
The prisoner sought habeas corpus to challenge the authority keeping him confined.
A promise of liberty means little if habeas corpus can be defeated by hiding the prisoner.
Origin
The Latin phrase means you shall have the body. It comes from the command in a writ directing a custodian to produce a detained person. The remedy developed in English law before the famous statute of 1679; that act strengthened an existing procedure.
How it connects
The writ gives bodily confinement a route into court.
This word appeared in Making power answer for a prisoner, the Involves connection for September 13, 2026, which asked: What stops an arrest from becoming a disappearance?
Check yourself
Which request most directly invokes habeas corpus?
Ask a court to examine the authority for a person's detention. Exactly. Habeas corpus challenges the lawfulness of confinement; it is not a general name for every legal complaint.
What the sources establish
Habeas corpus is a procedure to test lawful detention; the phrase means you shall have the body and predates the 1679 act.
Sources
Habeas corpus (Cornell Legal Information Institute), Opening definition, Latin meaning, and purpose of judicial review
Act of Habeas Corpus (UK Parliament, Hansard), Lord Chancellor's opening historical account, June 27, 1979