Definition
Latin term from old English law meaning "chief justiciar" or "chief justiciary." The capitalis justitiarius was the presiding justice of the Aula Regis (the King's Court), the highest judicial officer in medieval England, and held authority over the administration of royal justice throughout the realm. The full title capitalis justitiarius totius Angliae — chief justice of all England — designated an officer who acted, in essence, as the king's judicial deputy, exercising broad governmental as well as judicial functions. During the king's absence from the kingdom, the capitalis justitiarius could dispatch justices throughout the counties to hear matters in the king's name.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in medieval English legal sources and in historical legal literature commenting on the early common law. Researchers encountering it will find it embedded in primary documents written in Law Latin, in chronicles, and in foundational English constitutional texts such as Magna Carta, where the capitalis justitiarius is specifically named in connection with the dispatch of itinerant justices.
The office carries significant transitional importance: the capitalis justitiarius of the Auria Regis period was not simply a judicial officer in the modern sense but held quasi-viceregal administrative authority. This fusion of judicial and executive power distinguishes the medieval office sharply from any modern equivalent, including the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. Researchers working in early common law history should be careful not to project backward the more limited judicial role of later chief justices.
The term also appears in secondary historical literature when authors are tracing the genealogy of English courts and the development of judicial hierarchy. Reeves' History of English Law and Blackstone's Commentaries both reference the office directly, and these are primary navigational points in the Law Mind corpus for following this thread. The excerpt from Magna Carta embedded in Burrill's entry — "Nos, vel, si extra regnum fuerimus, capitalis justitiarius noster, mittemus justiciarios per unumquemque comitatum" (We, or if we shall be out of the kingdom, our chief justiciar, shall send justices through every county) — shows the constitutional significance of the office in limiting royal justice to structured process.
The office was not permanent throughout English legal history. It rose to prominence under the Norman and Angevin kings, reached its height of power in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, and then effectively ceased to exist as a functioning office as the judicial and administrative functions of the crown became distributed among specialized courts and officers. By the time of Blackstone's writing in the eighteenth century, the office was already a matter of historical record rather than active practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the essential reference framework for this term, directing researchers to Blackstone's Commentaries (Book 3, chapter 4) and Reeves' History of English Law as the foundational secondary sources. Burrill's treatment is characteristically spare — identifying the term, translating it, and anchoring it to those two authorities — but does include the Magna Carta Latin passage, which is the most instructive primary source fragment available in this entry.
What Burrill does not address is the political dimension of the office: at its height, the capitalis justitiarius was effectively the second man in the kingdom. Figures such as Ranulf de Glanvill and Hubert Walter held the position and exercised authority extending well beyond judicial administration into governance of the realm. Historical legal dictionaries of the nineteenth century generally treat this term as a matter of terminological definition rather than institutional history, so researchers seeking depth on the office's political character will need to move beyond the dictionary shelf into legal history proper.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to medieval English law and has no direct counterpart in other common law jurisdictions. Its relevance in American legal research is limited to historical context — particularly in discussions tracing the origins of judicial offices and court structures that were transplanted, in modified form, to the colonies and early republic.