JUD - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

JUDAuthored

The Law Mind • 705 words

Definition

"Jud" is not an independent legal term in English law. It appears in Burrill's Law Dictionary only as a fragment — a truncated rendering of "judex" or related Latin compounds (judex, judicium, judicature) rather than a standalone entry. In legal research contexts, "jud." functions primarily as an abbreviation for judge, judgment, or judicial, depending on the source and era.

Where the abbreviation appears in legal texts, the most common referents are:

1. Judge. "Jud." prefixed to a name or title in court records, opinions, or digests to indicate judicial office.

2. Judgment. In case tables, indexes, and older digest systems, "jud." or "judg." compressed references to judgment entries.

3. Judicial. In statutory shorthand and legislative drafting notes, "jud." occasionally contracts the adjective judicial (as in jud. review, jud. notice).

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A hamlet in North Dakota; a ghost town in Texas. No legal significance.

Historical common usage: Not recorded as a common English word in Webster's 1913.

The gap between common usage and legal usage is not one of conflicting meanings but of context: in legal sources, "jud." is always an abbreviation, never a standalone noun. Readers encountering it in indexes or marginal notations should treat it as shorthand and resolve the full referent from context before citing.

Common Confusion

"Jud." is frequently confused with "judg." (judgment) in older printed indexes where typographical conventions were inconsistent. In pre-1800 English and American digests, both abbreviations appear for judgment entries; neither was standardized. Researchers should not assume "jud." means judge when it appears in a case digest index — context, placement, and the surrounding column headings are the controlling signals.

Why It Matters in Research

The primary research hazard with "jud." is misreading an abbreviated index entry and mistracing a citation. In Burrill's and similar 19th-century dictionaries, the term appears not as a headword but as a fragment at the edge of type columns — a bibliographic artifact of the printing format, not a defined term.

Several specific navigational points:

— Burrill's Dictionary uses running Latin fragments (judex, judicium, judicatura) as primary headwords in the "jud-" range. A researcher scanning that section should proceed directly to JUDEX and JUDICIUM for substantive doctrine.

— In colonial and early American court records, "Jud." preceding a surname identifies the presiding judge for citation and docket purposes. This convention persisted in some state courts through the mid-19th century.

— Law review footnotes and treatise indexes from 1850–1950 use "jud." as a space-saving contraction. The referent must be inferred from the surrounding citation string.

— Digital full-text searches for "jud" in corpus sources will generate substantial noise: fragments of judex, judicium, judgment, judicial, judiciary, and jurisdiction all collapse into the same short string. Query construction should use controlled vocabulary or bounded phrase searches rather than bare-string "jud" searches.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary does not treat "jud" as a headword. The fragment visible in the source material is the tail end of a prior entry and the opening of a new entry beginning with "judex" — a common artifact of dictionary column formatting. Burrill gives substantial treatment to JUDEX as a Roman and civil law figure (the private citizen appointed by the praetor to hear and decide a specific dispute), and to JUDICIUM as the proceeding before that judex. Neither concept maps cleanly onto the common law judge, and Burrill is careful to distinguish them. His entries in the jud- range reflect the dual inheritance of English law: the Roman civil law vocabulary absorbed through the ecclesiastical courts and equity, and the native common law vocabulary that developed parallel terminology independently.

No historical legal dictionary assigns standalone meaning to "jud" as a term of art. Its appearance in sources is always abbreviatory.

Jurisdictional Note

The abbreviation "jud." for judge appears in both English and American legal sources but is more common in American digests and reports from the 18th and 19th centuries. English practice more often used "J." for judge and "J." or "Judgt." for judgment, making the abbreviation conventions less ambiguous in English sources than in early American ones.

JUDmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

(104) JOSUM, Jusum. L. Lat. In old European law. Down; downward. Pausant arma sua josum; lay down their arms. L. Alam. tit. 45. Perhaps a corruption of deorsum. (105) ibid. assign it, except religious men and Jews. covery of damages in real actions. Id. Id. fol. 47 b. This last clause or exception was very common in ancient deeds. Co. Litt. 223 b. (106) fundamental one that the judex, like the juror, was a private person, regularly called in at a certain stage of a cause, to aid in its trial and determination. The circumstance, however, that private causes were generally referred to a single judex, to whom their exclusive management while before him was committed, constitutes a very marked and material point of distinction between the two offices. What the discretion of a judex was, how he contrived to provide himself, pro hac vice, with a sufficient amount of law knowledge to enable him to get through a cause, and upon what singular grounds he was often inclined to place his decision, may be seen in the very unreserved account given by the grammarian and critic Aulus Gellius, of his own experience in the office. Noctes Atticæ, lib. 14, с. 2. a (107) In a more general sense, the act, proJudges. Judices non tenentur exprimere cess or business of judging, that is, of hearcausam sententiæ suæ; judges are not ing as well as determining a cause. This was one of the senses of the Lat. judicium, (q. v.) (108) Relating to, or connected with the administration of justice; as a judicial officer. Having the character of judgment or formal legal procedure; as a judicial act. Proceeding from a court of justice; as a judicial writ, a judicial determination. Constituting the basis of a judgment; as a judicial opinion.