Chief Magistrate is a generic designation for a public official whose office—individual or collegial—is the highest in his or her class, in either of the fundamental meanings of Magistrate (which often overlapped in the Ancien régime): as a major political and administrative office (in a republican form of government, at state or lower level), and/or as a judge (in a given jurisdiction, not necessarily a whole state).
Read more about Chief Magistrate: Governing Chief Magistrates, Sources and References
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“To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws.”
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