from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. In the ancient common law, the state of an offender who had been sentenced for a capital offense.
- n. Obsolete Dishonor.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. The state a prisoner enters once a death sentence (usually for treason) had been issued; the state of being stripped of all civil rights.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. The act of attainting, or the state of being attainted; the extinction of the civil rights and capacities of a person, consequent upon sentence of death or outlawry.
- n. A stain or staining; state of being in dishonor or condemnation.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The act of attainting, or the state of being attainted; the legal consequence of judgment of death or outlawry pronounced in respect of treason or felony: as, a bill of attainder; to remove an attainder.
- n. A bringing under some disgrace, stain, or imputation; the state of being in dishonor.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. cancellation of civil rights
Sunday's term was bill of attainder, which is defined as:
So they pass a bill which is an ex post facto bill as well as a bill of attainder, which is unconstitutional, so they're using the tax code to punish people.
"I'm not surprised," said Drumcarro; "one of the old Douglas family before the attainder was as good as any one of their new-fangled dukes."
When Congress singles out someone or a group to penalize, it is a bill of attainder, which is as unconstitutional as you can get.
The Los Angeles Times reports that legal experts agree that the bill that passed the House on Friday would probably not be considered a bill of attainder, which is essentially a law that singles out one group for punishment and is prohibited by the Constitution.
As such, it sounds an awful lot like something the Constitution expressly forbids -- a bill of attainder, which is a punishment of particular individuals imposed not by a court of law but by a legislative body.
a bill of attainder, which is a punishment of particular individuals imposed not by a court of law but by a legislative body.
- What 'attainder' is, and why it affects our fighting men in uniform.
"attainder" clause and require it to continue to use their services?
Corporate interests like Disney fully plan to keep extending copyright indefinitely, like they did with the Bono Bill, a blatantly unConstitutional law (it changes the rules for events which have already occurred, which is a clear “ex post facto bill of attainder”, and hence unConstitutional).