petition

View more Law & Legal Issues videos

For more information on petition, visit Britannica.com.

noun

An application to a higher authority, as for sanction or a decision: appeal. Law prayer¹. See ask/answer, law.

verb

1. To bring an appeal or request, for example, to the attention of: address, appeal, apply, approach. Obsolete sue. See request.
2. To make application to a higher authority, as to a court of law: Law appeal, sue. See law.
3. To ask for employment, acceptance, or admission: apply, put in. See seek/avoid.

A written application from a person or persons to some governing body or public official asking that some authority be exercised to grant relief, favors, or privileges.

A formal application made to a court in writing that requests action on a certain matter.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees to the people the right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. Petitions are also used to collect signatures to enable a candidate to get on a ballot or put an issue before the electorate. Petitions can serve as a way of pressuring elected officials to adhere to the position expressed by the petitioners.

The right to petition the government for correction of public grievances derives from the English Magna Charta of 1215 and the English Bill of Rights of 1689. One of the colonists' objections to British rule before the American Revolution was the king's refusal to act on their petitions of redress. The Founders attempted to address this concern with the First Amendment, which affirms the right of the people to petition their government. Almost all states adopted similar guarantees of petition in their own constitutions.

Between 1836 and 1840, abolitionists collected the signatures of two million people on petitions against slavery and sent them to the U.S. House of Representatives. In the early twentieth century, states passed laws allowing initiative (the proposing of legislation by the people) and recall (an election to decide whether an elected official should be removed from office). Both processes start with the collection of a minimum number of signatures on a petition. Small political parties often use petitions to collect signatures to enable their candidates to be placed on the election ballot.

Petitions are also directed to courts of law and administrative agencies and boards. A petition may be made ex parte (without the presence of the opposing party) where there are no parties in opposition. For example, the executor of an estate may file a petition with the probate court requesting approval to sell property that belongs to the estate or trust.

In contested matters, however, the opposing party must be served with the petition and be given the opportunity to appear in court to argue the merits of the issues it contains. A prisoner may file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, in which the prisoner requests a hearing to determine whether he or she is entitled to be released from custody because of unconstitutional or illegal actions by the government. The prisoner must serve the government office that prosecuted him or her with a copy of the petition. The writ of habeas corpus, like many other types of writs, is discretionary; the court is free to deny the petition.

LearnThatWord.com is a free vocabulary and spelling program where you only pay for results!

• Judges, Lawyers, and Others in the Court System - petitioner: one seeking court remedies or making formal complaint or statement of cause of action in civil suit

Look up petition in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer.

In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to some official and signed by numerous individuals. A petition may be oral rather than written, and in this era may be transmitted via the Internet.

Contents 1 Legal 2 Early history 3 Modern use 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Legal

Petition can also be the title of a legal pleading that initiates a legal case. The initial pleading in a civil lawsuit that seeks only money (damages) might be called (in most U.S. courts) a complaint. An initial pleading in a lawsuit that seeks non-monetary or "equitable" relief, such as a request for a writ of mandamus or habeas corpus, custody of a child, or probate of a will, is instead called a petition.

Early history

In pre-modern Imperial China petitions were always sent to an Office of Transmission (Tongzheng si or 通政司) where court secretaries read petitions aloud to the emperor.^[1] Petitions could be sent by anybody, from a scholar-official to a common farmer, although the petitions were more likely read to the emperor if they were persuasive enough to impeach questionable and corrupt local officials from office.^[1] When petitions arrived to the throne, multiple copies were made of the original and stored with the Office of Supervising Secretaries before the original written petition was sent to the emperor.^[1]

Petitions were a common form of protest and request to the British House of Commons in the 18th and 19th centuries, the largest being the Great/People's Charter, or petition of the Chartists. They are still presented in small numbers.

The Petition Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of the people "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The right to petition has been held to include the right to file lawsuits against the government.

Modern use

Petitions are commonly used in the U.S. to qualify candidates for public office to appear on a ballot; while anyone can be a write-in candidate, a candidate desiring that his or her name appear on printed ballots and other official election materials must gather a certain number of valid signatures from registered voters. In jurisdictions whose laws allow for ballot initiatives, the gathering of a sufficient number of voter signatures qualilfies a proposed initiative to be placed on the ballot. The 2003 California recall election, which culminated in the recall of Governor Gray Davis and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger, began when U.S. Representative Darrell Issa employed paid signature gatherers who obtained millions of signatures at a cost to Issa of millions of dollars. Once the requisite number of signatures was obtained on the recall petition, other petitions were circulated by would-be candidates who wanted to appear on the ballot as possible replacements for Davis. After that step, a vote on the recall was scheduled.

Other types of petitions include those that sought to free Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment by the former apartheid government of South Africa. The petitions had no legal effect, but the signatures of millions of people on the petitions represented a moral force that may have helped free Mandela and end apartheid. Non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International often use petitions in an attempt to exert moral authority in support of various causes. Other nongovernmental subjects of petition drives include corporate personnel decisions.^[2] Internet petition is a new form of a petition becoming commonplace in the 21st century.

See also

• Motion (legal)
• Motion for leave
• Internet Petition

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Brook, 33.
2. ^ Flight attendant launches petition drive to replace American Airlines executives By Terry Maxon, Fri., Feb. 17, 2012 Dallas Morning News

External links

•  "Petition". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921. 

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Common misspelling(s) of petition

• petetion

Dansk (Danish)
n. - bønskrift, begæring
v. tr. - andrage om
v. intr. - ansøge

Nederlands (Dutch)
verzoek, petitie, rekest, verzoekschrift indienen, verzoeken

Français (French)
n. - pétition, (Jur) demande
v. tr. - faire une pétition, (Jur) réclamer (qch)
v. intr. - (gén) faire une pétition, (Jur) demander (le divorce)

Deutsch (German)
n. - Antrag, Gesuch, Petition
v. - petitionieren

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (έγγραφη) αίτηση, αναφορά, έκκληση
v. - (εξ)αιτούμαι, υποβάλλω αίτημα/αίτηση, κάνω αναφορά, κάνω έκκληση

Italiano (Italian)
presentare una petizione, petizione, supplica

Português (Portuguese)
n. - petição (f)
v. - rogar, requerer

Русский (Russian)
ходатайствовать, прошение, петиция

Español (Spanish)
n. - petición, instancia, demanda, solicitud, recurso
v. tr. - peticionar, solicitar, presentar demanda
v. intr. - peticionar, solicitar, presentar demanda

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - begäran, anhållan, ansökan, bön
v. - begära, hemställa, bönfalla

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
请愿, 陈情书, 诉状, 向...请愿, 祈求, 请求

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 請願, 陳情書, 訴狀
v. tr. - 向...請願, 祈求, 請求
v. intr. - 請願, 請求

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 청원, 기원, 소장
v. tr. - 청원하다, 신청하다
v. intr. - 원하다, 진정하다, 간청하다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 請願書, 請願, 陳情
v. - 請願する

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) إلتماس, , عريضه, مطلب, مطالبه (فعل) يلتمس, يتوسل, يتضرع‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮עצומה, עתירה, בקשה, תפילה, פטיציה‬
v. tr. - ‮עתר, ביקש, הפציר‬
v. intr. - ‮הגיש עצומה‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.