The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cognizable \Cog"ni*za*ble\ (? or ?), a. [F. connaissable, fr. conna[^i]tre to know, L. cognoscere. See Cognition.]
Capable of being known or apprehended; as, cognizable causes.
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Fitted to be a subject of judicial investigation; capable of being judicially heard and determined.
Cognizable both in the ecclesiastical and secular courts.
--Ayliffe.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1670s, "capable of being known," also "liable to be tried in a given court or jurisdiction," from stem of cognizance + -able.
Wiktionary
a. 1 Capable of being known or perceived. 2 (context legal English) Within the jurisdiction of a particular court. alt. 1 Capable of being known or perceived. 2 (context legal English) Within the jurisdiction of a particular court.
WordNet
adj. capable of being known [syn: knowable, cognisable, cognoscible] [ant: unknowable]
Usage examples of "cognizable".
The president of the lessee corporation had refused to testify on the ground that the questions related to his private affairs and to matters cognizable only in the courts wherein they were pending and that the committee avowedly had departed from any inquiry in aid of legislation.
The latter interpretation, however, does not state a limitation on the power of making treaties in the sense of international conventions, but rather a necessary procedure before certain conventions are cognizable by the courts in the enforcement of rights under them, while the former interpretation has been contradicted in practice from the outset.
Those who argue that seven justices agreed on the equal-protection violation and two of them disagreed only on the appropriate remedy miss this point: There can be no judicially cognizable equal-protection violation where the only possible remedy produces greater equal-protection problems.
The contentions which have arisen between political parties as to the rights of negro suffrage in the Southern States, would scarcely be cognizable judicially under either the Fourteenth or the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
The president of the lessee corporation had refused to testify on the ground that the questions related to his private affairs and to matters cognizable only in the courts wherein they were pending and that the committee avowedly had departed from any inquiry in aid of legislation.