A
Agency inaction
An agency's decision not to bring an enforcement action is presumed to be committed to its discretion and therefore unreviewable. The presumption marks the outer boundary of what any delay claim can reach, and distinguishes a refusal to enforce from a failure to adjudicate.
Source Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821 (1985)
All Writs Act
The provision under which a federal court of appeals acts when it supervises a district court. It is an auxiliary power: it lets a court protect a jurisdiction it already has, and does not create jurisdiction of its own.
Source 28 U.S.C. § 1651
Alternative writ
The first step of the traditional two-step structure. It puts the respondent to a choice: do the thing, or come and explain. California preserves the mechanism by statute; federal practice reproduces its function through an order to answer.
Source Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 1087
Article 78 proceeding
New York folds three of the old writs into one proceeding, and the petitioner selects the branch the facts support. The four-month limitations period is what decides most of these cases, and it runs from the point the determination becomes final and binding.
Source N.Y. C.P.L.R. Article 78; N.Y. C.P.L.R. § 217
C
Clear and indisputable right
The first of the three conditions. The petitioner's entitlement must be clear enough that it is not genuinely contestable. A claim that is merely strong, or that would probably succeed on appeal, does not satisfy it. This is the element that most often defeats a petition aimed at a discretionary ruling.
Source Kerr v. U.S. District Court, 426 U.S. 394 (1976)
Collateral order doctrine
A small class of trial court orders may be appealed immediately because they conclusively determine a disputed question separate from the merits and would be effectively unreviewable later. The category is deliberately narrow, and orders excluded from it are among the few for which mandamus remains a live route.
Source Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541 (1949)
D
Discrete agency action
The Supreme Court held that a claim to compel agency action can proceed only where the plaintiff asserts that the agency failed to take a discrete action that it is required to take. A court can order the step; it cannot order an agency to administer a program better.
Source Norton v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, 542 U.S. 55 (2004)
Discretionary act
An act the law commits to the judgment of the official performing it. Mandamus does not reach it. A court may order an agency to decide an application; it may not order the agency to grant it. Under the Administrative Procedure Act the point is expressed as an exception to review for action committed to agency discretion by law.
Source 5 U.S.C. § 701(a)(2)
E
Exhaustion of administrative remedies
Where an agency route remains open, courts normally require it to be used first. The requirement matters twice over in this subject: an unused administrative appeal is both the faster route and the other adequate remedy that defeats the writ. Some exhaustion requirements are statutory and rigid; others are judge-made and admit exceptions.
Source Darby v. Cisneros, 509 U.S. 137 (1993)
Extraordinary writ
A remedy granted outside the ordinary course of trial and appeal. Mandamus, prohibition and habeas corpus are the familiar members of the family. The label carries a practical consequence: courts treat these as reserved for the exceptional case, and a court may refuse one even where every requirement is satisfied.
Source Kerr v. U.S. District Court, 426 U.S. 394 (1976)
I
Interlocutory appeal
The certified interlocutory appeal requires the district judge to certify that the order involves a controlling question of law on which there is substantial ground for difference of opinion, and the court of appeals to agree to hear it. It should be considered before mandamus, since an available route is an adequate remedy.
Source 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b)
M
Mandamus
An order from a court directing a public official, a government agency or a lower court to perform a duty the law already imposes on them. It compels action that is owed; it does not decide how a discretionary question should come out. In United States federal practice the district courts draw the power from 28 U.S.C. § 1361 and the appellate courts from the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651.
Source 28 U.S.C. § 1361; 28 U.S.C. § 1651
Ministerial duty
An obligation defined by law with enough precision that the official performing it exercises no judgment about whether to act. Docketing a document properly presented is ministerial. So is adjudicating an application that has been filed. Choosing the outcome of that adjudication is not. The distinction is the hinge of nearly every mandamus case.
Source Mallard v. U.S. District Court, 490 U.S. 296 (1989)
Mootness
Federal courts decide live controversies only. When an agency adjudicates a stalled application while the case is pending, the request to compel adjudication normally has nothing left to operate on and the case is dismissed. This is the ordinary ending of a successful delay case, and it is worth distinguishing from a loss.
Source U.S. Const. art. III, § 2
O
Other adequate remedy
The third condition is that no other adequate means of relief be available. An appeal that can repair the harm is normally adequate, which is why mandamus so rarely lies against an ordinary adverse ruling. An unused administrative appeal has the same effect in agency cases.
Source Roche v. Evaporated Milk Association, 319 U.S. 21 (1943)
P
Peremptory writ
The second step, and the order that actually compels. It may issue in the first instance only where the respondent has had notice of the application, which is the safeguard the two-step structure exists to provide.
Source Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 1088
Prohibition
The mirror image of mandamus: it forbids rather than compels. Federal courts rarely use the name, handling such requests under the general supervisory power, while several state systems keep it distinct. It is forward-looking, so a request made after the act is complete is really a request to vacate.
Source 28 U.S.C. § 1651
R
Real party in interest
Because a Rule 21 petition names the lower court as respondent, the opposing litigant is designated the real party in interest. That party, not the judge, ordinarily files the answer when the court orders one.
Source Fed. R. App. P. 21(a)(1)
Relator
A term inherited from older practice, still current in several state systems and in quo warranto. It names the private person at whose instance a proceeding is brought in the name of the state or the public.
Source State practice; see D.C. Code § 16-3502 for the federal analogue in quo warranto
Respondent
The party the petition asks the court to command. Naming the respondent correctly matters: an official is sued in an official capacity, and where the office changes hands the successor is substituted automatically in federal civil practice.
Source Fed. R. Civ. P. 25(d)
Return
The respondent's answer. In many delay cases the return reports that the underlying decision has now issued and asks that the petition be denied as moot, which is among the most common endings these cases have.
Source Fed. R. App. P. 21(b)(4)
Rule 21 petition
The appellate vehicle. It is captioned against the lower court rather than the opposing party, who appears as a real party in interest. The rule contains a feature worth knowing: the court may deny the petition without any response, but it may not grant the writ before ordering the respondent to answer.
Source Fed. R. App. P. 21
S
Section 1361
Enacted in 1962, it gives every federal district court original jurisdiction over an action to compel an officer, employee or agency of the United States to perform a duty owed to the plaintiff. Its wording is also its limit: it does not reach state officials, state courts, or private parties.
Source 28 U.S.C. § 1361
Show cause order
The modern descendant of the alternative writ. Its practical significance in federal appellate practice is procedural rather than predictive: the court cannot grant the writ without one, so a petition that never draws an order to answer cannot succeed. It is not a signal that the court agrees with the petitioner.
Source Fed. R. App. P. 21(b)
Sovereign immunity
The United States may be sued only where it has waived immunity. For claims seeking relief other than money damages against a federal agency or officer, the Administrative Procedure Act supplies the waiver. This is a threshold question, decided before anything about the merits.
Source 5 U.S.C. § 702
Supervisory mandamus
The label courts use when the writ is issued not to remedy an individual injustice but to settle a recurring question of judicial administration. It is the strand under which transfer and privilege petitions are usually analyzed.
Source La Buy v. Howes Leather Co., 352 U.S. 249 (1957)
T
TRAC factors
Six considerations set out by the D.C. Circuit in 1984 and adopted across the country: a rule of reason; any timetable Congress supplied; the greater intolerance of delay where human health and welfare are at stake; the effect of expediting on competing agency priorities; the interests prejudiced by the delay; and the point that no impropriety need be shown. The third and fourth carry most of the weight, and they pull against each other.
Source Telecommunications Research & Action Center v. FCC, 750 F.2d 70 (D.C. Cir. 1984)
U
Unreasonable delay
The Administrative Procedure Act directs a reviewing court to compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed, and separately requires agencies to conclude matters presented to them within a reasonable time. Together these supply the claim that accompanies almost every modern delay petition.
Source 5 U.S.C. §§ 555(b), 706(1)
W
Writ
A written command issued by a court. The word survives from a period when each remedy had its own form; most have been folded into ordinary civil procedure, and the handful that remain are called extraordinary because they are exceptions to the normal route of trial and appeal.
Source 28 U.S.C. § 1651
Writ of mandate
California uses this term rather than mandamus, and divides it. Traditional mandate reviews the failure to perform a duty; administrative mandate reviews a decision made after a hearing at which evidence was taken. Choosing the wrong track is the most common error in California practice.
Source Cal. Civ. Proc. Code §§ 1085, 1094.5