JURISDICTION • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Jurisdiction

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/dʒˌʊrəsdˈɪkʃən/ /dʒˌʊrɪsdˈɪkʃən/ Listen

noun

Jurisdiction n.

(Law) The legal power, right, or authority of a particular court to hear and determine causes, to try criminals, or to execute justice; judicial authority over a cause or class of causes; as, certain suits or actions, or the cognizance of certain crimes, are within the jurisdiction of a particular court, that is, within the limits of its authority or commission.

The authority of a sovereign power to govern or legislate; the right of making or enforcing laws; the power or right of exercising authority. "To live exempt From Heaven's high jurisdiction." "You wrought to be a legate; by which power You maim'd the jurisdiction of all bishops."

Sphere of authority; the limits within which any particular power may be exercised, or within which a government or a court has authority. Note: Jurisdiction, in its most general sense, is the power to make, declare, or apply the law. When confined to the judiciary department, it is what we denominate the judicial power, the right of administering justice through the laws, by the means which the laws have provided for that purpose. Jurisdiction is limited to place or territory, to persons, or to particular subjects.

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Etymology of 'Jurisdiction'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Jurisdiction" Quotes from Famous Books

... moderation or the contempt of the Romans gave a legal sanction to the form of ecclesiastical police which was instituted by the vanquished sect. The patriarch, who had fixed his residence at Tiberias, was empowered to appoint his subordinate ministers and apostles, to exercise a domestic jurisdiction, and to receive from his dispersed brethren an annual contribution. New synagogues were frequently erected in the principal cities of the empire; and the sabbaths, the fasts, and the festivals, which were either commanded ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (based in Saint Lucia; one judge of the Supreme Court is a resident of the islands and presides over the Court of Summary Jurisdiction) ...

— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... Conciergerie. This epigram is intelligible. In the early days of the monarchy, noble criminals—for the villeins (a word signifying the peasantry in French and English alike) and the citizens came under the jurisdiction of the municipality or of their liege lord—the lords of the greater or the lesser fiefs, were brought before the king and guarded in the Conciergerie. And as these noble criminals were few, the Conciergerie was large enough ...

— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... concluded treaties with them; it was Zemindar of several districts, and within those districts, like other Zemindars of the first class, it exercised the powers of a sovereign, even to the infliction of capital punishment on the Hindoos within its jurisdiction. It is incorrect, therefore, to say, that the Company was at first a mere trader, and has since become a sovereign. It was at first a great trader and a petty prince. The political functions at first attracted little notice, because they were merely auxiliary to the commercial ...

— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... consisting generally of conical grass huts, while others are gable-ended, after the coast-fashion—a small collection of ten or twenty comprising one village. Over these villages certain headmen, titled Phanze, hold jurisdiction, who take black-mail from travellers with high presumption when they can. Generally speaking, they live upon the coast, and call themselves Diwans, headsmen, and subjects of the Sultan Majid; but they no sooner hear of the march of a caravan than they ...

— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

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