Rule 97.01.Prohibition--General.

A writ of prohibition is a court order that stops a lower court, judge, or other tribunal from going beyond the authority the law gives it. Rule 97.01 does not describe the writ itself so much as it tells lawyers and judges which rulebook to open. File in a circuit court, and Rule 97 governs the whole proceeding. File in the Supreme Court or a court of appeals, and a separate set of appellate rules, Rules 84.22 through 84.26, works alongside Rule 97 to control how the case moves.

The rule also does something quietly important: it closes the gaps. Prohibition is an old remedy, and no single rule can anticipate every procedural question that might come up in every case. Rule 97.01 says that when this rule and the appellate rules are silent, the ordinary rules of civil procedure and the existing body of law on prohibition step in to fill the space. Nobody is left guessing whether a rule of general application, on things like motions or filing deadlines, applies to a prohibition case; it does, unless Rule 97 says otherwise.

Finally, the rule gives the court itself some flexibility. If a case presents a procedural wrinkle that none of these sources resolve, the court can order whatever additional steps the orderly conduct of the case, or the effectiveness of the remedy, requires. That built-in flexibility matters because prohibition cases often move fast and involve a mix of circuit court records, appellate filings, and unusual fact patterns that a rigid rule could not fully anticipate.