In law, a special master is an authority appointed by a judge to make sure that judicial orders are actually followed.
In England, at common law, there were "Masters in Chancery," who acted in aid of the Equity Courts. There were also "Masters in Lunacy," who conducted inquiries of the same nature as modern civil commitment proceedings. In the table of precedence for England these two offices rank immediately above Companions of the Bath.
In the United States of America a special master is an "adjunct to a federal court, and Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allows a federal court to appoint a master, with the consent of the parties, to conduct proceedings and report to the Court.
Read more about Special Master: United Kingdom, United States
Famous quotes containing the words special and/or master:
“An indirect quotation we can usually expect to rate only as better or worse, more or less faithful, and we cannot even hope for a strict standard of more and less; what is involved is evaluation, relative to special purposes, of an essentially dramatic act.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.”
—Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)