Definition
An archaic English legal term with two distinct but related meanings rooted in Old English court practice:
1. To expel an officer or attorney from court as a consequence of offense or misconduct. When a court officer or attorney was removed from court — whether for misconduct or for failing to appear in response to a bill filed against him — he was said to be "forejudged the court." The expulsion itself was the judgment rendered against him.
2. More broadly, to deprive a person of something by judicial sentence; to condemn a party to lose a right, interest, or thing through the judgment of a court.
The term is obsolete in modern practice. It appears primarily in historical English legal sources and is occasionally encountered as FORJUDGE, which is treated by some authorities as the preferred or alternative spelling.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Listed only as an alternative form of "forjudge" — no independent common meaning.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "To judge beforehand, or before hearing the facts and proof; to prejudge."
The gap here is significant and a likely source of confusion for researchers. Webster's 1913 treats forejudge as a compound of "fore" (before) and "judge" — meaning to form a judgment prematurely, akin to prejudice or prejudgment. The legal meaning runs in a different direction entirely: it refers not to premature judgment but to a court's formal act of expelling or depriving someone as a result of judgment rendered. A researcher encountering forejudge in a legal context and relying on Webster's 1913 will misread the term.
Common Confusion
Forejudge and forjudge appear interchangeably across the historical sources. Rapalje & Lawrence directs readers to FORJUDGE without providing an independent entry, suggesting that spelling was the preferred form in some traditions. Bouvier and both editions of Black's treat forejudge as the primary headword. Researchers should search both spellings when working through historical indices, digests, and court records.
The Webster's 1913 meaning — prejudging — should not be imported into legal analysis. The legal term does not carry any connotation of premature or biased judgment.
Why It Matters in Research
Corpus researchers will encounter forejudge almost exclusively in Old and Middle English legal records, early English court proceedings, and the foundational law dictionaries. Several practical notes:
Spelling instability is the first navigational challenge. Forejudge, forjudge, and occasionally fore-judge appear across sources without consistent preference. Any full-text search of the Law Mind corpus for one spelling may miss instances of the others.
The Webster's 1913 definition is a research trap. Because forejudge looks like a plain English compound word, a researcher without legal dictionary access may rely on Webster's and conclude the term means prejudgment or bias — a meaning that would fundamentally distort the legal context, particularly in records about attorney discipline or forfeiture proceedings.
The two legal meanings — expulsion from court and deprivation by sentence — while related, point to different procedural contexts. The first is disciplinary (attorney or officer misconduct); the second is broader and touches on forfeiture and property deprivation. Distinguishing which sense applies requires attention to the surrounding procedural record.
The term also signals the era of the source. Any modern document using forejudge is almost certainly quoting or analyzing a historical source. Forejudge has no living procedural counterpart in American or contemporary English law.
Connections to adjacent concepts: researchers following a forejudge reference will often need to turn to materials on amercement, disbarment's historical antecedents, and forfeiture — all areas where the Law Mind corpus has relevant depth.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries reach general agreement on substance but show meaningful variation in emphasis.
Black's (both editions) gives the most complete treatment, identifying both the expulsion-from-court meaning and the broader deprive-by-judgment meaning, and specifically noting the case of an officer or attorney expelled for failing to appear on a bill filed against him. Both editions cite Cowell — John Cowell's Interpreter (1607) — as authority, which is consistent with the term's Old English provenance.
Bouvier adds useful texture by noting that "among foreign writers, says Blount, forejudge is to banish, to expel" — crediting Thomas Blount's Nomo-Lexicon (1670) — and confirms that the banishment/expulsion sense carried into English law specifically in the context of attorneys expelled for misconduct. Bouvier also cites Cunningham's Law Dictionary as a corroborating source.
Rapalje & Lawrence declines to provide an independent entry and cross-references FORJUDGE, which suggests that by the late nineteenth century, forjudge was gaining authority as the more standard spelling in American legal reference practice, at least in some quarters.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: none of the sources trace the procedural mechanism by which a forejudgment was initiated, recorded, or appealed. Researchers needing that level of procedural detail will need to consult primary English court records or treatises on early English practice directly.
Jurisdictional Note
Forejudge is a term of Old English law with no recognized equivalent in American statutory or procedural law. It appears in American legal dictionaries as a historical reference only. Researchers working in English ecclesiastical, common law, or early equity records will encounter it more frequently than those working in American materials.