o be detained has actually appeared, or has been
summoned, before the court which orders committal, to answer to some
charge.

If not always, at any rate since 1679, a warrant of commitment has been
necessary to justify officers of the law in conveying a prisoner to gaol
and a gaoler in receiving and detaining him there. It is ordinarily
essential to a valid commitment that it should contain a specific
statement of the particular cause of the detention ordered. To this the
chief, if not the only exception, is in the case of commitments by order
of either House of Parliament (May, _Parl. Pr._, 11th ed., 63, 70, 90).
Commitments by justices of the peace must be under their hands and
seals. Commitments by a court of record if formally drawn up are under
the seal of the court.

Every person in custody is entitled, under the Habeas Corpus Act 1679,
to receive within six hours of demand from the officer in whose custody
he is, a copy of any warrant of commitment under which he is detained,
and may challenge its legality by application for a writ of habeas
corpus.

So far as concerns the acts of justices and tribunals of limited
jurisdiction, the stringency of the rules as to commitments is an
important aid to the liberty of the subject.

In the case of superior courts no statutory forms of commitment exist,
and the same formalities are not so strictly enforced. Committal of a
person present in court for contempt of the court is enforced by his
immediate arrest by the tipstaff as soon as committal is ordered, and he
may be detained in prison on a memorandum of the clerk or registrar of
the court while a formal order is being drawn up. And in the case of
persons sentenced at assizes and quarter sessions the only written
authority for enforcement is a calendar of the prisoners tried, on which
the sentences are entered up, signed by the presiding judge.

Commitments are usually made by courts of criminal jurisdiction in
respect of offences against the criminal law, but are also occasionally
made as a punishment for disobedience to the orders made in a civil
court, e.g. where a judgment debtor having means to pay refuses to
satisfy the judgment debt, or in cases where the person committed has
been guilty of a direct contempt of the court.

The expenses of executing a warrant of commitment, so far as not paid by
the prisoner, are defrayed out of the parliamentary grants for the
maintenance of prisons.

COMMITTEE (fro