Reversal

reversal n. the decision of a court of appeal ruling that the judgment of a lower court was incorrect and is reversed. The result is that the lower court which tried the case is instructed to dismiss the original action, retry the case, or is ordered to change its judgment. Examples: a court which denied a petition for writ of mandate is ordered to issue the writ. A lower court which gave judgment with no evidence of damages is ordered to dismiss.

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REVERSAL, international law. First. A declaration by which a sovereign promises that he will observe a certain order, or certain conditions, which have been once established, notwithstanding any changes that may happen to cause a deviation therefrom; as, for example, when the French court, consented for the first time, in 1745, to grant to Elizabeth, the Czarina of Russia, the title of empress, exacted as a reversal, a declaration purporting that the assumption of the title of an imperial government, by Russia, should not derogate from the rank which France had held towards her. Secondly. Those letters are also termed reversals, Litterae Reversales, by which a sovereign declares that, by a particular act of his, he does not mean to prejudice a third power. Of this we have an example in history: formerly, the emperor of Germany, whose coronation, according to the golden ball, ought to have been solemnized at Aix-la-Chapelle, gave to that city when he was crowned elsewhere, reversals, by which he declared that such coronation took place without prejudice to its rights, and without drawing any consequences therefrom for the future.