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
Famous quotes containing the words chief and/or magistrate:
“These are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
““O human creature, ... you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce.””
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)