ADJUDICATION, 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 bank ruptcy 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 seques tration. In Scots law the term "adjudication" has a technical meaning, being the name of that diligence by which a creditor adjudges the heritable estate of his debtor, in order to appro priate it to himself either in payment or security of his debt. The term is also applied to an action of the same nature by which the person beneficially entitled to a right may obtain a legal title to it.
In some foreign legal systems, adjudication means the judicial decision which determines the ownership of a disputed thing, or the shares therein, or the extent of ownership, as in the case of disputed boundaries, following in this the usual meaning of adjudicatio in Roman law.