Crocodilia was named by Owen (1842) [originally spelled Crocodilia by Owen; corrected by Wermuth 1953; also falsely attributed to Laurenti 1768 (based on naming of Crocodylus) and Gmelin 1789 (see Dundee 1989)]. It is extant. It was considered monophyletic by Thies et al. (1997).

It was synonymized subjectively with Emydosaurii by Bonaparte (1850); it was reranked as the suborder Crocodylia by Walker (1970); it was corrected as Crocodylia by Cooper (1981), Holman and Case (1988), Carroll (1988), Thies et al. (1997), Sereno et al. (2001), Peng et al. (2001) and Pearson et al. (2002); it was reranked as the unranked clade Crocodylia by Gauthier et al. (1989), Williamson (1996), Brochu (2000), Molnar et al. (2002), Brochu (2004), Hua and Jouve (2004), Brochu (2006), Salisbury et al. (2006), Turner (2006), Brochu et al. (2009), Andrade et al. (2011) and Bronzati et al. (2012).

It was assigned to Diapsida by Osborn (1903); to Crocodylomorpha by Walker (1970); to Crocodyliformes by Gauthier et al. (1989); to Crocodilomorphi by Cooper (1981) and Williamson (1996); to Archosauria by Haughton and Brink (1954), Thulborn (1975), Thurmond and Jones (1981) and Thies et al. (1997); to Archosauria by Carroll (1988) and Peng et al. (2001); to Reptilia by Owen (1861), Case (1901), Case (1904), Andrews (1906), Estes (1964), Estes and Berberian (1970), Sahni and Srivastava (1976), Holman and Case (1988), Pearson et al. (2002) and Sepkoski (2002); to Eusuchia by Brochu (2000) and Hua and Jouve (2004); to Neosuchia by Sereno et al. (2001) and Turner (2006); and to Eusuchia by Molnar et al. (2002), Brochu (2004), Brochu (2006), Salisbury et al. (2006), Brochu et al. (2009), Andrade et al. (2011) and Bronzati et al. (2012).