All 5 Uses of

magistrate

in

The Good Earth

"She is to marry the second son of a Shanghai magistrate," said the woman, and then after a long pause she added, "They must be getting poorer for the Old Mistress herself told me they wished to sell land—some of the land to the south of the house, just outside the city wall, where they have always planted rice each year because it is good land and easily flooded from the moat around the wall."†
Chpt 5

magistrate = judicial official

And he could go into the town and go to the court where the magistrate lived and say to him, "My uncle is one of the Redbeards."†
Chpt 23 *

The money they entrusted, then, to the magistrate in the district, a man new and just come.†
Chpt 27

Now this magistrate was a poor man and had not seen so much money in his lifetime before, being only newly risen to his position through the bounty of his father, who had put all the money he had and could borrow to buy this place for his son, so that from it the family might acquire some wealth.†
Chpt 27

When the river burst again the people went howling and clamoring to this magistrate's house, because he had not done what he promised and mended the dykes, and he ran and hid himself because the money he had spent in his own house, even three thousand pieces of silver.†
Chpt 27

Definition:

a judge or judicial official

The exact meaning of magistrate varies widely depending upon the context. For example:

in the U.S. federal court: assists district court judges by handling minor offenses or administrative tasks such as preliminary hearings (often referred to as a magistrate judge rather than just a magistrate)
in some U.S. states: a judge in the state court
in France, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and other civil law countries: a sitting magistrate is a judge and a standing magistrate is a prosecutor
in England: may be a volunteer without formal legal training who performs a judicial role with regard to minor matters
in ancient Rome: a powerful officer with both judicial and executive power