Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

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Exairesĕos Diké

（ἐξαιρέσεως δίκη, also ἀφαιρέσεως δίκη). An action brought at Athens to recover damages for the attempt to deprive the plaintiff of his slave; not when the defendant claimed property in the slave, but when he asserted him to be a freeman. As the condition of slavery at Athens incapacitated a man from taking any legal step in his own person, if a reputed slave wished to recover his rights as a freeman, he could only do it by the assistance of one who was himself a freeman, and who was said ἐξαιρεῖσθαι or ἀφαιρεῖσθαι αὐτὸν εἰς ἐλευθερίαν (c. Pancl. 10), in libertatem vindicare.