Definition
An obsolete English legal office. Justices of the Jews (Latin: *justiciarii ad custodiam Judæorum assignati*, meaning justices assigned to the custody of the Jews) were royal officers appointed under Richard I to administer and enforce the laws and royal orders governing the financial dealings of Jewish communities in England — specifically the regulation of money contracts and usury. The office was an instrument of the Crown's supervisory authority over Jewish lending and commercial activity, reflecting the particular legal status assigned to Jews under medieval English law.
Common Confusion
The Black's Law Dictionary entry as it appears in some editions contains a typographical or editorial artifact: the definition runs together an entry for "Justices of the Jews" with a separate, unrelated entry for "justices of nisi prius" — judges of superior English courts who traveled on circuit to hear cases at assizes. These are entirely distinct offices. Researchers encountering a truncated or run-on passage in Black's should treat the two as separate entries and not conflate the medieval Jewish-supervision office with the nisi prius circuit judiciary.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a historical artifact of narrow scope, but it surfaces in two research contexts that benefit from precise identification.
First, researchers working in medieval English legal history, the history of Jewish communities in England, or the history of royal financial regulation will encounter this term in primary sources, chronicles, and older secondary literature. Understanding that this was a formally constituted royal judicial commission — not merely an informal administrative role — helps situate it within the broader structure of Angevin and Plantagenet governance.
Second, the term appears in older legal dictionaries as a cross-reference point for the broader Crown practice of regulating Jewish financial life through dedicated legal machinery, which included the Exchequer of the Jews (Scaccarium Judæorum), a separate royal tribunal established around the same period. Researchers who find a reference to "Justices of the Jews" in a historical source and follow it only through Black's risk confusion due to the run-on editorial error described above. Burrill's entry is the cleaner source for this term.
The office ceased to have practical relevance after the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 under Edward I, and the term has no operational meaning in any modern legal system. It appears in research principally as a historical and comparative reference point.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the more precise and self-contained definition, giving the Latin designation (*justiciarii ad custodiam Judæorum assignati*) and correctly attributing the office to Richard I's regulatory orders concerning Jewish contracts and usury. Burrill cites Blount and Holthouse, both of which draw on antiquarian English legal sources.
Black's Law Dictionary carries the same substantive content but, in the edition reflected in the source material here, the entry is editorially problematic — the text of the Jews entry runs directly into the definition of "justices of nisi prius" without a clear break. This is an artifact of typesetting or abridgment and does not reflect any actual legal relationship between the two offices.
Neither dictionary provides meaningful depth on the broader institutional context: neither mentions the Exchequer of the Jews, the Statute of Jewry (1275), or the specific regulatory framework within which these justices operated. Researchers needing more than a definitional anchor should look beyond the dictionary shelf to historical legal scholarship on medieval Anglo-Jewish law.
Jurisdictional Note
This office was specific to the English Crown and has no equivalent or successor in any modern common law jurisdiction. It has no relevance to Scottish, Irish, or colonial legal systems, and nothing in American law derives from or corresponds to it.