Superior

Higher; more elevated in rank or office. Possessing larger power. Entitled to command, influence or control over another. In estates, some are superior to others. An estate entitled to a servitude or easement over another estate is called the "superior" or "dominant," and the other, the "inferior" or "servient," estate. 1 Bouv. Inst. no. 1612. In the feudal law, until the statute quia emptores precluded subinfeudations, (q. v.,) the tenant who granted part of his estate to be held of and from himself as lord was called a "superior."

— Superior and vassal. In Scotch law. A feudal relation corresponding with the English "lord and tenant." Bell.

— Superior courts. In English law. The courts of the highest and most extensive jurisdiction, viz., the court of chancery and the three courts of common law, i. e., the queen's bench, the common pleas, and the exchequer, which sit at Westminster, were commonly thus denominated. But these courts are now united in the supreme ceurt of judicature. In American law. Courts of general or extensive jurisdiction, as <hstm-guished from the inferior courts. As the official style of a tribunal, the term "superior court" bears a different meaning in different states. In some it is a court of intermediate jurisdiction between the trial couris and the chief appellate court; elsewhere it is the designation of the ordinary ntsi prim courts ; in Delaware it is the court of last resort.

— Superior fellow servant. A term recently introduced into the law of negligence, and meaning one higher in authority than another, and whose commands and directions his inferiors are bound to respect and obey, though engaged at the same manual work. Illinois Cent. It. Co. v. Co.leman, 59 S. W. 14, 22 Ky. Law Rep. 878; Knutter v. Telephone Co., 67 N. J. Law, 646, 52 Atl. 565, 58 L. R. A. 808.

— Superior force. In the law of bailments and of negligence, an uncontrollable and irresistible force, of human agency, producing results which the person in question could not avoid; equivalent to the Latin phrase "vis major." See Vis.'