judicial

judicial, judiciary, juridical, juristic are comparable because of verbal confusion and because all imply some connection with courts of law.

Judicial, by far the most common of these adjectives both in legal and in general use, often implies a direct reference to the courts of jus-tice, the judge who presides over a court of justice, or the judges who form such a court

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a judicial decision

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a judicial duty

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a judicial proceeding

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I am told at times by friends that a judicial opinion has no business to be literature— Cardozo

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The term is also used in distinction from executive, legislative when applied to that one of the powers, departments, or functions of the government which is associated with a court (as the United States Supreme Court), which gives definitive decisions on questions of law or interprets the constitution or basic law

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the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government

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government analyzes into three main functions . . . legislative, executive, and judicial activities— Ogg & Ray

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In extended use judicial is applied especially to a type of mind, mental activity, or manner suggestive of that of a judge (as in detachment or fair-mindedness) or appropriate to a judge or court of justice (as in orderliness and seriousness of procedure)

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to a strictly judicial mind . . . the quality of age or of novelty would carry no necessary implication of value— Grandgent

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the review made an evident effort to be judicial . . . and so exhibiting both the good and bad points of the novel it alternated favorable and unfavorable judgments— McCloskey

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Judiciary is occasionally used in place of judicial, especially when it suggests reference to the courts in general and to the administration of justice as a whole

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the appointment of more women to higher judiciary positions— Current Biog.

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In current usage, however, judiciary occurs predominantly as a substantive, with judicial its corresponding adjective. The two words juridical and juristic imply a connection with the law, especially as it is administered in the courts, rather than with the judges or those who settle questions of law. Often these terms come close to legal in meaning

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ordered ... to grant juridical recognition to the Assemblies of God churches in Italy— Time

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but in learned use they are more restricted in significance.

Both terms, but especially juridical, imply a reference to the law as it appears to learned lawyers and judges —that is, as a highly complex and involved body of principles, statutes, decisions, and precedents requiring vast knowledge, skill in interpretation, and a keen logical mind in those who put it to use; therefore, the term often means characteristic of, determinable by, or useful to a person with such knowledge and skill

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Eden is clearly working for the juridical separation of Formosa and the Pescadores from the mainland— Healey

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high time that we act on the juridical principle that aggressive war-making is illegal and criminal— R. H. Jackson

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Juristic implies rather a reference to the science of law

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set forth with all the circumstance of philosophical and juristic scholarship— Veblen

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laws and juristic compilations of the Norman period— Stenton

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[Justice] Holmes had struck in 1905 in his dissent in Lochmer v. N.Y. the high pitch of American juristic thought— New Republic

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