Judge
United States

In many states throughout the United States, a judge is addressed as "Your Honor" or "Judge" when presiding over the court. "Judge" may be more commonly used by attorneys and staff, while either may be commonly used by the plaintiff or defendant. Notably, the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, the largest unified trial court in the United States, has a rule that the judge shall be addressed only as "Your Honor" while in court, and never as "Judge", "Judge (name)", "ma'am", or "sir". This is somewhat unusual as "Judge" and "Judge (name)" or similar forms of address are considered appropriate and respectful in many other courts.

The judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the judges of the supreme courts of several US states and other countries are called "justices". Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States and Justices of other courts are addressed as "Justice (name)". The Chief Justice of the United States is formally addressed as "Mr. or Madam Chief Justice" but also may be identified and addressed as "Chief Justice (name)".

Regardless of the specific term employed (judge or justice), the formal title is reduced to the postnominal abbreviation "J." in case citations and certain case law reporters when it is necessary to identify the author of a cited opinion. In American English, the postnominal "J." is always divided from the judge's name by a comma and a space, so that a citation to a dissenting opinion by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia would warn that the cited opinion is not the majority opinion with the parenthetical notation "Scalia, J., dissenting". The plural form is JJ. Unlike British English, this abbreviation style is used only in case citations, and is not used mid-sentence in regular prose (as distinguished from case citations dropped into sentences as parentheticals). Thus, a prose sentence discussing the actual contents of a dissenting opinion right before a case citation to that opinion would refer to the reasoning of "Justice Scalia", not "Scalia, J."

The justices of the supreme courts usually hold higher offices than any other judges in a jurisdiction, including a justice of the peace, a judge who holds police court in some jurisdictions and who may also try small claims and misdemeanors. However, the State of New York inverts this usual order. The initial trial court in this state is called the Supreme Court of New York, and its judges are called "justices". The next highest appellate court is the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, whose judges are also called "justices". However, the highest court in New York is called the New York Court of Appeals, whose members are called "judges".

Judges in certain jurisdictions, such as New York and New Jersey, who deal with guardianships, trusts and estates are known as " surrogates ".

A senior judge, in US practice, is a retired judge who handles selected cases for a governmental entity while in retirement, on a part-time basis.

Subordinate or inferior jurisdiction judges in US legal practice are sometimes called magistrates, although in the federal judiciary of the United States, they are called magistrate judges. Subordinate judges in US legal practice who are appointed on an ad hoc case-by-case basis, particularly in cases where a great deal of detailed and tedious evidence must be reviewed, are often called "masters" or "special masters".

Judges of courts of specialized jurisdiction (such as bankruptcy courts or juvenile courts) were sometimes known officially as " referees ", but the use of this title is in decline. Judges sitting in courts of equity in common law systems (such as judges in the equity courts of Delaware) are called " chancellors ".

Individuals with judicial responsibilities who report to an executive branch official, rather than being a part of the judiciary, are often called " administrative law judges " (ALJs) in US practice. Historically, such officials were previously known as hearing examiners or referees before American English settled on the ALJ title. They commonly make initial determinations regarding matters such as workers' compensation, eligibility for government benefits, regulatory matters, and immigration determinations.

Judges who derive their authority from a contractual agreement of the parties to a dispute, rather than a governmental body, are called arbitrators. They typically do not receive the honorific forms of address nor do they bear the symbolic trappings of a publicly appointed judge. However, it is now common for many retired judges to serve as arbitrators, and they will often write their names as if they were still judges, with the parenthetical "(Ret.)" for "Retired".

Unlike many civil law countries which have some courts on which panels of judges with nearly equal status composed of both legally trained professional judges and lay judges who lack legal training and are not career judges, the United States legal system (like most Anglo-American legal systems) makes a clear distinction between professional judges and laypeople involved in deciding a case who are jurors who are part of a jury. Most but not all US judges have professional credentials as lawyers. Non-lawyer judges in the United States are often elected, and are typically either justices of the peace or part-time judges in rural limited jurisdiction courts. A non-lawyer judge typically has the same rights and responsibilities as a lawyer who is a judge holding the same office and is addressed in the same manner.
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