competence hearing

1. 1.

   a hearing to determine legal capacity (to determine whether the defendant can understand the charges and cooperate with a lawyer in preparing a defense)

   Broaderhearing

   law

Questions about competence hearing

What does competence hearing mean?

competence hearing means "a hearing to determine legal capacity (to determine whether the defendant can understand the charges and cooperate with a lawyer in preparing a defense)".

Is competence hearing a common word?

competence hearing is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.