Jurisdiction
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in ordinary language and law: (1) The legal power, right, or authority of administering justice; the legal power which a court of and tried before it; the legal right by which judges exercise their authority; judicial authority over a cause. ( ) The power or right of governing or legislating; the power or right of exercising authority, or of making and enforcing laws. (3) The extent to which such authority extends; the district within which such power may be exercised. Appellate jurisdiction, jurisdiction in cases of appeal from inferior courts. Original jurisdiction, the legal right of hearing and determining a case in the first instance . In Roman Catholic theology, ecclesiastical jurisdiction is defined as the "power which is concerned with the worship of God and the salvation of souls , and is exercised in foro externo as well as in foro interno." By commission from the Supreme Pontiff, whose powers, theologians teach, are derived from Christ through Peter, are constituted legates, patriarchs, primates, and prelates; by superiors of convents, provosts, and vid vicars-general receive their jurisdiction; vica and a jurisdiction exercised without challenge for 40 years is valid by prescription. To absolve a penitent, jurisdiction is necessary. Secular priests obtain this from their bishops; but confessors belonging to the regular orders have jurisdiction from the Pope over all the faithful when they have obtained the approbation of the bishop. A penitent in articulo mortis may be validly absolved, even in reserved cases, by a simple priest, even if degraded, apostate, or irregular. In ordinary cases, absolution given by a priest without jurisdiction is void. or canon, rectors of universities,
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's three-part definition from 1921 — the authority of a court, the power of governing, and the territory over which that power runs — is still how the word is taught in law schools today. What has grown is its reach: courts now routinely assert jurisdiction across borders, from the International Criminal Court, which opened in 2002 and can try heads of state, to "long-arm" statutes and data laws like the EU's GDPR (2018) that bind companies with no physical presence in the territory, and to the tangled question of which court governs conduct on the internet. On the ecclesiastical side, the 1917 Code of Canon Law that Collier's was summarising was replaced by the 1983 Code, which speaks mainly of "faculties" rather than jurisdiction; the old rule Collier's noted — that any priest, however irregular, may absolve a dying penitent — survives intact, and in 2016 Pope Francis extended to all priests the faculty to absolve abortion, once a reserved case.
Written for this edition, 2026.