Ecclesiastical jurisdiction

Ecclesiastical jurisdiction in its primary sense does not signify jurisdiction over ecclesiastics ("church leadership"), but jurisdiction exercised by church leaders over other leaders and over the laity.

Jurisdiction is a word borrowed from the legal system which has acquired a wide extension in theology, wherein, for example, it is frequently used in contradistinction to order, to express the right to administer sacraments as something added onto the power to celebrate them. So it is used to express the territorial or other limits of ecclesiastical, executive or legislative authority. Here it is used as the authority by which judicial officers investigate and decide cases under Canon law.