Popular judge rises to conclude (5)
I believe the answer is:
infer
'conclude' is the definition.
(inferring is a kind of concluding)
'popular judge rises' is the wordplay.
'popular' becomes 'in'.
'judge' becomes 'ref'.
'rises' says the letters should be written backwards.
'ref' in reverse letter order is 'fer'.
'in'+'fer'='INFER'
'to' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for infer that I've seen before include "Establish by deduction" , "Conclude by reasoning" , "Take finer meaning from" , "Take or gather meaning from" , "Presume" .)