Definition
A Latin term from Roman civil law meaning to adjudge, to determine, or to formally assign something to a person by the act of a court. The term captures the judicial act of settling a matter by authoritative decree — not merely deciding a question of law or fact, but rendering a binding assignment or disposition with the force of judgment behind it.
In old English law, the term carried a narrower application: to forjudge, meaning to deprive a person of a right, tenure, or standing through judicial action. This usage appears in the context of mesne lords being forjudged of their fee and service.
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Common Confusion
ADJUDICARE is the verb form; ADJUDICATIO is the corresponding noun (the act or result of adjudging). Researchers working in Latin legal texts should take care not to treat the two as interchangeable. ADJUDICATUM, the past participle, means "adjudged" and functions as a completed-action form, signifying that a judgment has already been rendered. All three appear in close proximity in civil law sources and can create confusion in untranslated passages.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in Latin primary sources — Roman civil law texts, medieval English statutes, and early common law materials — rather than in modern case law or statutory codes. Researchers will encounter it primarily when working with original or translated civil law sources, including the Institutes of Justinian, and in pre-modern English legal instruments.
The dual life of this term is a genuine research trap. In civil law contexts, adjudicare carries a broad meaning of judicial assignment or decree — the act by which a court distributes property, resolves competing claims, or fixes rights. In old English law usage, however, it collapses into the specific and punitive concept of forjudgment, which is legally and procedurally distinct. A researcher who reads the civil law meaning into an English statutory passage, or vice versa, will misread the source.
The Statute of Westminster II, Chapter 9 — the English statutory source Burrill cites for the forjudgment usage — is the operative primary document for the English law sense. Researchers pursuing that thread should locate and read that provision directly, as Burrill's summary is compressed.
Cross-corpus connections: because adjudicare is the root of ADJUDICATION, ADJUDICATOR, and ADJUDGED, researchers building keyword searches in historical databases should account for the full family of derived terms. Latin-language corpus searches will require the inflected forms (adjudicatur, adjudicetur, adjudicatum) as well as the base form.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal shelf source for this term in the Law Mind corpus. Burrill correctly identifies both the civil law and old English law meanings and distinguishes them, which is useful. The entry is brief, however, and treats the forjudgment application as self-explanatory when it is not. The civil law sense — adjudging property or rights to a person by judicial act — has roots in Roman procedural law and is elaborated in the Institutes at 4.17.7, the citation Burrill provides. That passage addresses the actio familiae erciscundae and related actions in which a judge had the power not merely to declare rights but to effectuate an assignment: the adjudicatio power was understood as a core feature distinguishing certain Roman actions from others.
Burrill does not engage with this procedural significance, which limits the entry's usefulness for civil law research. Researchers needing depth on the Roman law dimension should not rely on Burrill alone. No other shelf source in the current Law Mind corpus covers this term, which leaves a gap in comparative coverage.
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Jurisdictional Note
The civil law sense of adjudicare retains relevance in Louisiana and other mixed civil law jurisdictions, where the tradition of judicial assignment derived from Roman law remains part of the doctrinal vocabulary. In common law jurisdictions, the term is effectively obsolete in practice, surviving only in historical and scholarly texts.
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