BAR - Black's Law Dictionary

A partition or railing running across a court room, intended to separate the general public from the space occupied by the judges, counsel, jury, and others concerned in the trial of a cause. In the English courts it is the partition behind which all outerbarristers and every member of the public must stand. Solicitors, being officers of the court, are admitted within it; as are also queen's counsel, barristers with patents of precedence, and serjeants, in virtue of their ranks. Parties who appear in person also are placed within the bar on the floor of the court.

A particular part of the courtroom; for example, the place where prisoners stand at their trial, hence the expression "prisoner at the bar."

The court, in its strictest sense, sitting in full term. The presence, actual or constructive, of the court. Thus, a trial at bar is one had before the full court, distinguished from a trial had before a single judge at nisi prius. So the "case at bar" is the case now before the court and under its consideration; the case being tried or argued.

In another sense, the whole body of attorneys and counsellors, or the members of the legal profession, collectively, who are figuratively called the "bar," from the place which they usually occupy in court. They are thus distinguished from the "bench," which term denotes the whole body of judges.

In the practice of legislative bodies, the outer boundary of the house; therefore, all persons, not being members, who wish to address the house, or are summoned to it, appear at the bar for that purpose.

In the law of contracts, an impediment, obstacle, or preventive barrier.

Thus, relationship within the prohibited degrees is a bar to marriage. In this sense also we speak of the "bar of the statute of limitations." That which defeats, annuls, cuts off, or puts an end to.

Thus, a provision "in bar of dower" is one which has the effect of defeating or cutting off the dower-rights which the wife would otherwise become entitled to in the particular land.

In pleading, a special plea, constituting a sufficient answer to an action at law; so called because it barred, i. e., prevented, the plaintiff from further prosecuting it with effect, and, if established by proof, defeated and destroyed the action altogether. Now called a special "plea in bar." It may be further described as a plea or peremptory exception of a defendant to destroy the plaintiff's action. City of San Antonio v. Johnson, Tex.Civ.App., 186 S.W. 866. See Plea in bar.

A barrier or counter over which liquors and food are passed to customers, hence the portion of the room behind the counter where the liquors for sale are kept. Hinton v. State, 137 Tex.Cr.R. 352, 129 S.W.2d 670, 673.

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