Take your example. I don’t know whether a web page is encrypted. I do however know whether the transmission of one request of some website contents to a specific web browser is. But that won’t yet tell me whether the communication between me and the website has stayed confidential between the intended parties (which is probably what you’re interested in).
Is the data in a TLS connection transformed in such a way that it would make it difficult for an intermediary to figure out the plain information being sent?
If so, the data is in fact encrypted. Where are you getting this idea that encryption is more than that? That is by definition what encryption is, and everything else is just approaches and security layers on top of it. You don't have to like the encryption method, you don't have to care who it's from, you don't have to care about anything else. Encryption is encryption even if it's as pointless as a caesar cipher.
And yeah, there's things like certificates and CAs with HTTPS, but that's totally secondary to the encryption part. No one would bother with HTTPS if it couldn't establish encrypted connections.
If a lawyer or a judge doesn't understand that they themselves are frequently using encryption when they use the internet, that's a problem. They don't need to care about the nitty gritty details that you and others bring up. If they view encryption as something that only bad guys use, why should they be a part of the judicial system in the year 2021?
I feel like you're overdefining encryption to make a point, when you don't need to at all.
Honestly, I haven't the faintest clue the point you are making or why you are nitpicking to this degree. I think I made it clear why legal and judicial professionals should have a rudimentary understanding and awareness of encryption for the purpose of making sound decisions that affect society. If your disagreement with my definition of encryption gets in the way of that for you, then I really don't know what to say. Look up what the word "encrypt" means, think of the etymology, and rethink what you've been saying.
You're asking for them to have a very strange understanding of encryption, that doesn't match how the term is normally used. The important part is the security, not that you need an algorithm to decode. It's not nitpicking to say you're asking for them to know something irrelevant that's adjacent to some important things they should understand.
The only thing worse than a judge who doesn't understand the first thing about computers would be a judge who thinks they understand computers but doesn't.
It’s the job of the attorneys to make the case for or against using subject matter experts etc.
We are headed for a more authoritarian future if those making law or making judgments only see privacy tech as fringe and criminal, or have little meaningful underatandiing of it.