Judgment, also spelled judgement , in all legal systems, a decision of a court adjudicating the rights of the parties to a legal action before it. A final judgment is usually a prerequisite of review of a court’s decision by an appellate court, thus preventing piecemeal and fragmentary appeals on interlocutory (provisional) rulings (see interlocutory decree).
A judgment generally operates to settle finally and authoritatively matters in dispute before a court. Judgments may be classified as in personam, in rem, or quasi in rem. An in personam, or personal, judgment, the type most commonly rendered by courts, imposes a personal liability or obligation upon a person or group to some other person or group. This obligation may be to pay a sum of money, to perform some act, or to refrain from doing so. On the other hand, the judgment may be for the defendant, negating the plaintiff’s claim for relief.
An in rem judgment imposes no personal liability on anyone but adjudicates the interests of all persons in a specific thing or property in the custody of the court or otherwise subject to its jurisdiction. The designation quasi in rem describes a judgment that affects the interests of one particular party, rather than all parties, in a thing or property within the control or jurisdiction of the court. Once a judgment has been rendered, there are various bars to relitigation by the parties involved on the issues adjudicated (see res judicata).
A judgment is valid and of legal effect only if the court that issued it had competence to decide the questions of law presented by the case, as well as jurisdiction over the persons or things involved (see competence and jurisdiction). Jurisdiction over a person is obtained by service of a writ or warrant or by some other type of notification. Jurisdiction over property, a necessity for any valid judgment that disposes of the property itself, may be obtained by seizure or attachment of the property by the court. If the court deals with the legal status of the parties before it, as in an action for divorce, it is generally required that at least one of the parties be a resident of the jurisdiction in which the court is located.
Questions of a court’s competence to decide a case are determined in most cases by the details of the particular country’s court structure. In general, lesser courts may not hear cases involving more than a fixed sum of money. Further, probate, family law, and criminal matters are often handled exclusively by specialized courts.
In many instances the successful party to a lawsuit does not need to take any additional action to enforce his rights under the judgment, as when the judgment merely disposes of property in the physical custody of the court. When a judgment imposes a personal obligation on one party to another, however, the latter may have occasion to resort to a variety of remedies that the law provides for the enforcement of his rights. If the judgment orders one party to perform some act (other than the payment of money) or to refrain from some type of conduct, the court has at its disposal the full range of its powers to punish for contempt to ensure that its orders will be carried out (see injunction).
In the case of debt, a money judgment acts as a lien on all of the debtor’s property and on all property that he has transferred away to escape his creditors. The judgment creditor may also garnish wages or other sums owed to the debtor. In many jurisdictions, moreover, a judgment debtor may still be imprisoned for failure to pay alimony or support ordered by the court, for example, or for failure to satisfy judgment for damages. See also appeal.