Judge
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a legal officer. In ordinary language, a civil officer invested with power to hear and determine causes, civil astice in of corthe othe han these ry and whole sys res of the United from dis- 3. Judgea ple others of ad not ofter horit cy series pea sed those of rs those of NER th : or criminal, and to administer justice in courts held for that purpose ; or a person authorized or empowered in any way to decide a dispute or quarrel. In Law. The National and State systems of judicature in the United States comprise in their list of officers judges of various degrees of dignity and of widely variant functions. In most of the States the most numerous class are the presiding officers of courts of oyer and terminer , criminal courts, courts of correction, etc., the names given similar tribunals in the different commonwealths varying. They have in most instances both criminal and (to a certain extent) civil jurisdiction , but in other cases are restricted entirely to one or the other function. Of a higher dignity than these are the circuit judges , who in some commonwealths have large supervisory and reviewing powers, while the whole system is presided over by the judges of the State courts . The United supreme States judges range in dignity from district to supreme court officials. Judges are recipients of office in divers ways some being elected by the people, others by the Legislature; and yet others are appointed by the President or by governors of the States . Jewish History.-Judges were certain remarkable individuals raised up in Israel after the death of Joshua and prior to the establishment of the Jewish monarchy. At that time there was little unity among the tribes, each of which , like a Scottish Highland clan, looked up to its own individual chief, and not often to any higher human authority. All acted in the Jewish theocracy as vicegerents of Jehovah. The series of events, oftener than once repeated, was first, that the people were seduced into idolatry; next, that as a punishment for this, they were conquered , and placed under the yoke of a foreign oppressor; then a judge arose who under God set them free, and the land had rest normally for 40 years. The Hebrew name Shophetim sometimes means princes as well judges. The functions of the judge in some respects resembled those of Roman dictator, and in others those of a Mohammedan Mahdi. judiciary and is not, previous to his appointment, a military officer .
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The 1921 account describes state benches full of "courts of oyer and terminer" and courts of correction; most states have since consolidated those colonial-era names into unified trial courts, usually called superior, district or circuit courts, under state court reorganizations that spread through the twentieth century. The federal picture Collier's sketched has also been reshaped: the Judiciary Act of 1925 gave the Supreme Court broad discretion to pick its own cases through certiorari, and the courts of appeals now sit in thirteen circuits. Selection has changed too - alongside popular election and executive appointment, many states adopted merit-selection plans on the Missouri model from 1940 onward - and the bench is no longer all male and white, Thurgood Marshall joining the Supreme Court in 1967 and Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981. On the biblical section, scholars still read the Judges as tribal deliverers, but the recurring cycle of apostasy, conquest and forty years' rest is now generally treated as the shaping framework of a later editor rather than a plain chronicle of events.
Written for this edition, 2026.