MAGISTRATE

Magistrate

A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage, the term usually refers to a judge. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a magistrate has limited law enforcement and administration authority. In civil law systems, a magistrate might be a judge in a superior court; the magistrates' court might have jurisdiction over civil and criminal cases. A related, but not always equivalent, term is chief magistrate, which historically can denote a political and administrative officer.

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magistrate

Noun

  1. A judicial officer with limited authority to administer and enforce the law. A magistrate's court may have jurisdiction in civil or criminal cases, or both.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: magistrate
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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