Definition
A Latin term from old European and feudal law meaning proscribed or outlawed — specifically, placed entirely outside the protection and access of the courts. A person declared forjudicatus was denied all recourse to judicial proceedings, effectively cast beyond the reach of legal remedy or legal standing. The condition was a formal legal status, not merely a social stigma: it barred the affected individual from initiating or participating in court proceedings of any kind.
The term is closely associated with forjudicare, the verb from which it derives, meaning to condemn by judicial sentence, to disseize by judgment, or to expel from court entirely.
Common Confusion
FORJUDICATUS should not be conflated with the related term FORJUDGER (or FORJUDGE), which refers to the act or judgment by which a person is expelled or barred — the verb form of the process. Forjudicatus is the resulting status: the condition of the person upon whom that judgment has fallen. Researchers encountering either term in historical records should determine whether the source is describing the act of expulsion or the state of the expelled party. Burrill's treats forjudicare as a separate headword; Rapalje & Lawrence fold the term into a brief gloss without distinguishing the verb from the status.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of exclusively historical significance. It will appear only in medieval and early modern legal sources — feudal rolls, ecclesiastical records, civil law commentaries, and treatises on the law of nations predating modern procedural codes. Researchers working in those corpora should be aware of several points:
First, the concept overlaps with but is not identical to outlawry in the English common law tradition. English outlawry (exlegatus, caput lupinum) developed its own procedural apparatus; forjudicatus draws from the continental civilian tradition and appears in Holy Roman Empire materials, including the Constitutions of Melfi (Liber Augustalis) of Frederick II, cited by Burrill. Conflating the two in cross-jurisdictional research will produce inaccurate readings.
Second, Rapalje & Lawrence's entry is notably thin — a single word gloss ("Outlawed") followed by an unrelated entry for FORLER-LAND. Researchers relying on Rapalje & Lawrence alone will miss the procedural specificity that Burrill provides: the person is not merely declared an outlaw in the general sense but is specifically constituted as one placed outside all access to judicial process (foris omnem aditum judicii constitutus). That distinction matters when assessing the legal consequences described in a primary source.
Third, Burrill's citation to Spelman's Glossarium and to Frederick II's Constitutions of Naples (Const. Neap. Fred. Imp. lib. 2, tit. 3) gives researchers two anchoring primary sources for the term's usage in medieval European law. Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum is a foundational reference for feudal and ecclesiastical Latin terminology; Frederick II's Constitutions are a landmark civil law compilation from the thirteenth century. Researchers tracing the term into primary materials should begin there.
Fourth, the term is essentially extinct in operative modern law. It will not appear in contemporary statutes or case law. Its research value is confined to legal history, comparative law scholarship, and the interpretation of historical instruments.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the authoritative treatment among the shelf sources. Its definition — "proscribed; outlawed; denied all access to the courts" — captures both the general character (proscription, outlawry) and the specific procedural consequence (foreclosure from judicial access). The Latin gloss foris omnem aditum judicii constitutus is genuinely instructive: it frames the status as a spatial and procedural exclusion, placing the condemned person literally "outside" the threshold of judgment.
Rapalje & Lawrence offer only "Outlawed," which is accurate as far as it goes but loses the procedural dimension entirely. The placement of FORLER-LAND immediately after, without clear separation in some editions, has caused minor bibliographic confusion for researchers scanning entries in sequence; the two terms are wholly unrelated.
Neither source situates the term within the broader taxonomy of medieval proscription or distinguishes it clearly from cognate terms such as forisfactura (forfeiture), exlegatus, or bannitus. Researchers needing that comparative framework will need to go beyond these dictionaries to Spelman or to modern scholarship on feudal and imperial law.
Jurisdictional Note
The term belongs to the continental civil law tradition and the feudal law of medieval Europe, with specific attestation in the law of the Holy Roman Empire. It has no operative presence in common law jurisdictions. English legal sources may use analogous concepts under different terminology.