Definition
An archaic collective term encompassing all things pertaining to the administration of justice. Justicements does not refer to any single legal act, right, or proceeding but rather served as a broad umbrella term for the full apparatus of justice — its instruments, officers, proceedings, and the rights and powers incident to their exercise. The term was primarily taxonomic, appearing in older legal texts to group together the various elements, offices, and concerns that fell under the general heading of justice as an institutional function.
The word is obsolete in modern legal usage and has no direct successor term. Its substantive content has been absorbed by more precise vocabulary — jurisdiction, judicial power, due process, administration of justice — each capturing a portion of what justicements formerly gestured at as a whole.
Common Confusion
Researchers encountering justicements in historical sources should not conflate it with justiciable, justiciary, or judicature, though all share the same Latin root. Justiciable describes whether a matter is fit for judicial resolution. Justiciary refers to a high judicial officer. Judicature refers to the system of courts. Justicements is broader and less precise than any of these, functioning more as a category label than a term of art with defined legal content.
Why It Matters in Research
The term appears almost exclusively in pre-twentieth-century sources, and even within that period it was already labeled "old" by the time Black's first edition was compiled. Researchers encountering it in historical statutes, writs, charters, or treatises should treat it as a catch-all descriptor rather than a term with specific technical requirements or elements.
The principal research trap is over-reading specificity into the term. A document granting authority over "justicements" was not conferring a defined bundle of powers with known legal edges — it was using loose, aggregative language common in early legal drafting. The scope of what was included would have depended heavily on context, the granting authority, and local practice.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the most useful of the three source dictionaries here, because it runs the entry directly into adjacent terms — justicer and justices' courts — signaling that historical lexicographers understood justicements as part of a cluster of related concepts rather than a freestanding term. Researchers working in early American or English legal history should trace those adjacent terms when justicements appears in a source, as the surrounding vocabulary will often clarify what the drafter intended.
No meaningful jurisdictional variation attaches to this term because it had already passed out of active legal drafting before American jurisdictional distinctions hardened in the nineteenth century.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries are in complete agreement: justicements means all things appertaining to justice. The definitions are word-for-word identical across Black's first and second editions, which is consistent with the pattern for archaic terms that required no elaboration because they were no longer in active dispute or use.
Rapalje & Lawrence adds marginal value by embedding the term within a sequence of related entries, suggesting that practitioners consulting a dictionary of American and English law were expected to read justicements alongside justicer (an administrator of justice) and justices' courts (inferior tribunals of limited civil and criminal jurisdiction). This sequencing reflects an older encyclopedic approach to legal vocabulary, where meaning was partly conveyed by proximity to related terms.
None of the historical dictionaries provide examples of the term's use in practice, case law, or statute. This absence is itself informative: by the time these dictionaries were compiled, the term had become a historical artifact rather than a working term of art. Modern researchers should not expect to find litigation or statutory construction turning on the precise meaning of justicements.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia, criminal_101: Obstruction of Justice (18 USC 1501-1521) — for researchers tracing the modern legal treatment of conduct that interferes with the administration of justice, which is the substantive concern that justicements historically encompassed in aggregate.