Definition
A judgment is the official, final determination of a court resolving the rights and obligations of the parties to a legal proceeding. It is the court's authoritative pronouncement on the merits of a dispute or, in some cases, on a procedural ground that terminates the action. As the plural form, JUDGMENTS refers collectively to multiple such determinations or to the broader body of judicial decisions and the legal rules that govern them.
Judgments serve multiple functions: they establish what a party is entitled to recover or must perform, they create enforceable legal obligations, and they set the boundaries of what has been conclusively decided between the parties (the doctrine of res judicata). A judgment is distinct from an opinion, order, or ruling, though these terms are frequently conflated in practice.
Sub-definitions by type of relief:
1. Money judgment: A court's determination that one party owes a specific sum to another. The most common form of civil judgment. Once entered, it becomes a lien on real property in many jurisdictions and may be enforced through execution, garnishment, or levy.
2. Declaratory judgment: A court's binding statement of the parties' legal rights and obligations without ordering any specific act or awarding damages. Used to resolve genuine legal uncertainty before harm occurs or as a standalone remedy in contract and constitutional disputes.
3. Default judgment: A judgment entered against a party who has failed to appear or respond. The non-defaulting party typically obtains the relief sought in the complaint, subject to the court's discretion on damages.
4. Summary judgment: A judgment entered without trial when no genuine dispute of material fact exists and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
5. Consent judgment (stipulated judgment): A judgment entered by the court that incorporates terms agreed upon by the parties. Common in family law (divorce decrees) and settlement of civil litigation.
6. Foreign judgment: A judgment rendered by a court in another jurisdiction — either another state or another country — which must be recognized and enforced in the forum jurisdiction under applicable rules.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of judgment — the act or capacity of judging; forming an opinion; a conclusion or assessment.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The faculty of judging; the act of judging; the result of judging; a formal decision. Also used in a moral or religious sense — as in divine judgment.
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant. In ordinary English, "judgment" implies a personal assessment or opinion. In law, a judgment is a formal, enforceable act of a court — not an opinion in the colloquial sense, and not merely advisory. When researchers encounter "judgment" in legal sources, the question is always whether it carries legal force and creates binding obligations, not merely whether it reflects the court's reasoning or views.
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Common Confusion
JUDGMENT vs. ORDER: A judgment typically resolves the entire case or a final claim; an order resolves an interlocutory matter during litigation. The distinction matters for appellate jurisdiction — final judgments are generally immediately appealable; interlocutory orders usually are not.
JUDGMENT vs. OPINION: A court's written opinion explains reasoning; the judgment is the operative legal result. A court can issue a judgment with a brief or no written opinion. Researchers citing judicial authority must identify both.
JUDGMENT vs. DECREE: Historically, courts of equity entered decrees, while courts of law entered judgments. Modern merged procedure has largely eliminated this distinction, though "decree" persists in family law and some equity contexts. Older treatises and cases will use these terms as non-interchangeable.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
In addition to the types defined above, legal practice recognizes:
- Judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV / judgment as a matter of law): Entered after a jury verdict when the court determines the verdict cannot legally stand.
- Deficiency judgment: In secured lending, a judgment for the balance remaining after collateral is liquidated for less than the debt.
- Nunc pro tunc judgment: A judgment entered retroactively to correct the record.
- Interlocutory judgment: A preliminary judgment that does not fully resolve the action but may finally resolve a discrete issue within it.
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Why It Matters in Research
The most important navigational point for corpus researchers: the rules governing judgments changed significantly during the twentieth century, and historical sources reflect a procedural world that no longer exists in most jurisdictions. Bouvier's-era materials treat judgments at law and decrees in equity as fundamentally different instruments issued by different courts. After merger of law and equity under the Federal Rules (1938) and equivalent state reforms, this distinction largely collapsed — but the vocabulary persisted in statutes, forms, and practice guides well past merger. Researchers reading pre-1950 materials should treat "judgment" and "decree" as context-dependent terms that may or may not map onto modern categories.
The Full Faith and Credit dimension is a persistent research trap. Bouvier's fragment references the Act of May 26, 1790 — the first statutory implementation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. The modern rules governing recognition of sister-state judgments derive from that constitutional and statutory foundation but have been substantially refined by Supreme Court doctrine. Foreign country judgments, by contrast, are not governed by Full Faith and Credit at all and instead depend on comity doctrine and, in many states, the Uniform Foreign-Country Money Judgments Recognition Act. Researchers cannot assume that "enforcement of judgments" discussions in historical or multi-jurisdictional sources apply uniformly to both domestic and foreign judgments.
Post-judgment procedure — execution, domestication, garnishment, lien creation — is heavily jurisdiction-specific and has evolved substantially with modern exemption statutes and consumer protection law. The Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia entry on enforcement of judgments is the primary corpus resource for this body of doctrine.
Consent judgments and stipulated judgments deserve particular attention in family law research. They are simultaneously contracts and judicial acts, which creates unique questions about modification standards and enforcement. The family law corpus entry on separation agreements and stipulated judgments addresses the interplay between contract doctrine and the court's continuing jurisdiction.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary treats judgments primarily through the lens of interstate recognition, reflecting the foundational importance of the Full Faith and Credit Clause in early American practice. The fragment in the source material references both the constitutional text and the 1790 Act — evidence that Bouvier saw the enforceability of out-of-state judgments as a defining problem of the American legal order, not merely a procedural detail.
What Bouvier's misses, by necessity, is the transformation wrought by code pleading and later the merger of law and equity. Earlier editions of Bouvier's maintain rigid distinctions between judgments (common law) and decrees (equity) that modern researchers must discount when applying historical entries to contemporary questions. The classification schemes in nineteenth-century dictionaries — distinguishing "personal," "real," and "mixed" actions, for example — track a procedural taxonomy that has been substantially abandoned.
Bouvier's is reliable on the constitutional foundation of Full Faith and Credit and on the common-law enforceability rules of the period. It is unreliable as a guide to the modern law of res judicata, claim preclusion, and issue preclusion, which developed substantially in the twentieth century and reflect terminology that Bouvier's does not use.
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Jurisdictional Note
Judgment lien rules, exemption statutes, and domestication procedures vary significantly by state. Some states require a separate domestication action for sister-state judgments; others allow registration by filing. Statutes of limitations on judgment enforcement also vary. Researchers working on enforcement questions should not generalize from federal practice or from any single state's rules.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Enforcement of Judgments — Execution, Domestication, and Post-Judgment Discovery (Law Mind Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia)
Declaratory Judgment in Contract Disputes (Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia)
Divorce — Separation Agreements and Stipulated Judgments (Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia)
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