Word.ws English Dictionary

nulla poena sine lege

nulla poena sine lege is the alternative spelling of nulla pœna sine lege.

Meaning of nulla pœna sine lege

Phrase

nulla pœna sine lege

  1. The principle that a person shall receive no punishment unless he has committed an offence as explicitly defined in a law.
    • This is a wide definition, and the courts, no doubt bearing in mind that a wide application might tend to defeat the maxim “nulla pœna sine lege” have been cautious in its application in practice.1945, The Solicitors’ Journal, volume 89, page 262

Questions about nulla poena sine lege

What is nulla poena sine lege the alternative spelling of?
Nulla poena sine lege is the alternative spelling of nulla pœna sine lege.

Words near nulla poena sine lege in the dictionary

  1. null-terminated
  2. nulla
  3. nulla bona
  4. nulla nulla
  5. nulla nullas
  6. nulla poena sine lege
  7. nulla pœna sine lege
  8. Nulla Vale
  9. nulla-nulla
  10. nulla-nullas
  11. nullabilities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nulla poena sine lege (page history and authors); nulla pœna sine lege (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “nulla poena sine lege.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nulla_poena_sine_lege. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.