WordNet
n. a person who exercises authority over civilian affairs
Wikipedia
Civil authority or civilian authority, also known as civilian government, is the apparatus of a State, other than its military units, that enforces law and order. It is also used to distinguish between religious authority (for example Canon law) and secular authority. The enforcement of law and order is typically the role of the police in modern states.
Usage examples of "civil authority".
In any case, as you've made clear, you're the supreme civil authority in this area.
The soldiers were seldom roused to that fatal sense of their own strength, and of the weakness of the civil authority, which was, before and afterwards, productive of such dreadful calamities.
But as at the next term their numbers will be more than doubled by the accession of an additional band, as unbroken as these were, we mean to be prepared, and to ask of the legislature a power to call in the civil authority in the first instant of disorder, and to quell it on the spot by imprisonment and the same legal coercions, provided against disorder generally, committed by other citizens, from whom, at their age, they have no right to distinction.
In practice they work together well enough, with the Governor taking civil authority and Colonel Harrington exercising military authority.
All were carefully chosen to offer the most unambiguous and unsympathetic villains, the most egregious flaunting of civil authority, the greatest threat to innocents, the greatest likelihood of success, and the best opportunities for favorable media play.
Under the Constitution it can, like any part of the armed forces, operate inside the United Kingdom only in support of the civil authority-that is, the police.
Under the Constitution it can, like any part of the armed forces, operate inside the United Kingdom only in support of the civil authority—.
We do not have to use our imaginations in the matter, for there was once a Golden Age such as Archbishop Quigley dreams of, when the power of the church was complete, when emperors and princes paid homage to her, and the civil authority made haste to carry out her commands.
The company field directors, which constitute the Anchor's civil authority, are being pressed by many of the scientists and engineers to, would you believe, open the Gates.
Where civil authority is weak and corrupt, the Army is king by default.
But as Governor-General I shall, if necessary, exert my civil authority over the Commander-in-Chief.