Assessors are persons sometimes associated with judicial functionaries, to assist in the argument and procedure before them, and to advise their judgments. They may be usefully employed by persons in judicial stations whose previous education and pursuits scarcely qualify them for the duties cast upon them. Assessors are usually barristers or advocates learned in the law, and familiar with judicial proceedings. By the Municipal Corporation Act, it is enacted that the burgesses shall annually elect from among those qualified to be councillors two auditors and two assessors, the former to audit the accounts of the burgh, and the latter to revise the Burgess list. In the ecclesiastical law of England, a bishop, who is a spiritual judge, is assisted by his chancellor, as the episcopal assessor, and who in fact holds courts for the bishop. But in the case of a complaint against a clergyman for any ecclesiastical offence under the Church Discipline Act of 1840, the bishop is directed to inquire into the matter, assisted by three assessors, of whom the dean of his cathedral, or one of his archdeacons, or his chancellor, must be one, and a barrister another. In Admiralty cases the judges may command the assistance of nautical assessors. The judges of the common law courts and the Queen's counsel are, as a condition of their offices, assessors, or more properly assistants, of the House of Lords, advising the House on points of law which may be propounded to them by their lordships. In the Scottish universities, certain nominated members of the university court are called assessors.
In the United States, the term is only employed in the common sense of persons elected or appointed to determine the value of property liable to assessment.