bill of attainder

plural bills of attainder

1. lawA legislative determination imposing punishment without trial.

   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

   3 more examples

   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 cured

   1920, Francis Charles Montague, The History of England, from the Accession of James I to the Restoration, page 1663

   That the tax would take effect after some of the payments were made also raises issues. Says former Attorney General Richard Thornburg, also in an e-mail: "Such legislation could well run afoul of constitutional restrictions on bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, laws impairing the obligations of contract, unauthorized takings of property and the like.

   2009 March 21, Jim McTague, “Would a Tax on Bonuses Be Constitutional?”, in Barron's

   In the eighties, in the days when the Fenians and the Invincibles had run their dynamite war, the Irish Branch had had its offices in the old Yard, off Whitehall, in the shadow of government. Nolan's name would have been in its files, Nolan's and Lomansey's and McCafferty's, and, no doubt, Delaney's as well, and O'Brien's and Sexton's, and twenty more at least of Parnell's lieutenants, the lot of them jumbled together: terrorists, Land League agitators, silver-tongued orators from Clare, sedate family friends of the Prentisses - for the Irish Branch, the very word, Irish, was an informal bill of attainder.

   1988, Thomas Flanagan, novel: The Tenants of Time chapter 10

   Synonyms: bill of pains and penalties