bill of attainder
bill of attainder noun: a legislative determination imposing punishment without trial.
Noun
bill of attainder (plural bills of attainder)
- A legislative determination imposing punishment without trial.
- They resolved to copy a Tudor precedent and to proceed against him by bill of attainder. Doubts of law and defects of evidence would thus be cured1920, Francis Charles Montague, The History of England, from the Accession of James I to the Restoration, page 1663
- Coupled with the Constitution's proscription of ex post facto laws is a similar prohibition against bills of attainder.1998, Daniel E. Troy, Retroactive Legislation, page 56
- Synonyms:
- bill of pains and penalties
Synonyms of bill of attainder
- bill of pains and penalties
Forms of bill of attainder
| plural | bills of attainder |
|---|
Questions about bill of attainder
- What does bill of attainder mean?
- Bill of attainder means a legislative determination imposing punishment without trial.
- What part of speech is bill of attainder?
- Bill of attainder is a noun.
- What is the plural of bill of attainder?
- The plural of bill of attainder is bills of attainder.
Words near bill of attainder in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bill of attainder (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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