ADJUDICATION (

See also:

• LAT

Lat. adjudicatio; adjudicare, to

See also:

• AWARD (from O. Fr. ewart, or esguart, cf. " reward ")

award)  , generally, a trying or determining of a case by the exercise of judicial power; a judgment . In a more technical sense, in English and American law, an adjudication is an order of the bankruptcy courts by which a debtor is adjudged bankrupt and his property vested in a trustee . It usually proceeds from a resolution of the creditors or where no composition or scheme of arrangement has been proposed by the debtor . It may be said to consummate bankruptcy, for not till then does a debtor's property actually vest in a trustee for division among the creditors, though from the first act of bankruptcy till adjudication it is protected by a receiving order . As to the effect which adjudication has on the bankrupt, see under BANKRUPTCY . The same process in Scots law is called sequestration . In Scots law the term " adjudication " has quite a different meaning, being the name of that action by which a creditor attaches the heritable, i.e. the real, estate of his debtor, or his debtor's heir, in order to appropriate it to himself either in payment or security of his debt . The term is also applied to a proceeding of the same nature by which the holder of a heritable right, labouring under any defect in point of form, gets that defect supplied by decree of a court .