Definition
Cojudices (Latin, plural) refers to associate judges who hold equal authority with one another. In old English law, the term designated co-equal judicial officers sitting together, none superior to the others in power or jurisdiction. The word is the plural form; a single such judge would be a cojudex.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow Latin term of purely historical significance, unlikely to appear outside of medieval English legal texts, treatises on early common law courts, or records touching the organization of the judiciary before modern court structures solidified. Researchers encountering cojudices in primary sources should treat it as a descriptor of judicial parity rather than a distinct office — it signals that multiple judges were convened with equivalent authority, not that any one presided over the others.
The term surfaces in contexts where the structure of early English courts matters: discussions of the Chancery, common law benches, and ecclesiastical tribunals where co-equal judicial panels were convened. Burrill's entry cross-references Hargrave's Law Tracts and the Treatise of the Maisters of the Chauncerie, which suggests the term had some relevance to Chancery organization specifically. Researchers working in that area may find cojudices used to describe Masters or associate figures operating alongside the Lord Chancellor without subordination.
Because no modern court system uses this terminology, the research value is almost entirely contextual: recognizing the term when it appears, understanding it denotes judicial equality rather than any specialized role, and distinguishing it from terms denoting subordinate or inferior officers.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill's — give identical definitions: "associate judges having equality of power with others." There is no divergence among them on substance. Burrill adds modest bibliographic texture, citing Hargrave's Law Tracts and the Treatise of the Maisters of the Chauncerie as sources, which grounds the term in a specific documentary tradition rather than leaving it as pure abstraction.
None of the historical dictionaries elaborate on how cojudices were appointed, what courts they served, or whether the concept carried procedural consequences — such as voting rules or quorum requirements among co-equal judges. That silence is itself informative: the term appears to have been recorded as a matter of historical description rather than as a term with active doctrinal content even in the periods when these dictionaries were compiled. Researchers should not expect to find a developed body of law organized around cojudices as a concept.