Anil Agrawal (Retired) 06 December 2009

Puisne

A newly appointed judge in the high court is called “puisne judge”. It is an old practice.

Shakespeare used the word “puisny” and puisne is said to be an obsolete form of puny, surviving as applied to certain judges, meaning junior, petty, insignificant.

The word comes from Latin postea (after) and ne from Latin natus (born).

Any better word?

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3 Replies

N.K.Assumi (Advocate) 06 December 2009

Anil ji, thank you for the shkesperain meaning. But old or new does not matter, quality of the Judgement is what we judge the judges.

Anish goyal (Advocate) 06 December 2009

puisne /'pju:ni/ adj. denoting a judge of a superior court inferior in rank to chief justices. Origin: C16 (as n., denoting a junior or inferior person): from OFr., from puis 'afterwards' + ne 'born'; cf. puny. My mobile dictionary says this. Just wanna share it

Kiran Kumar (Lawyer) 06 December 2009

Anish has replied correctly.

in legal language, fewer times u ll c the words have different meanings and contexts.....in some case there have been few grammatical changes as well.

Shakespeare might have given the word 'Puisne' a different meaning but in legal language the meaning is different.

language and vocabulary keeps on changing with the passage of time.