Bill of Attainder
A Bill of Attainder (also Act or Writ of Attainder) was in English common law a criminal conviction of a person by parliament .
In the procedure, which was used only in extremely rare cases, Parliament acted in place of an ordinary court and its members acted as a jury . Previous court orders could be overturned by a Bill of Attainder . However, the judgment of the parliament had to be confirmed by the king. The procedure was usually not a legal but a political act.
In the US constitution , bills of attainder were prohibited from the outset as a violation of the separation of powers with which the executive and legislative branches interfered with the jurisdiction of the judiciary . In England the possibility of a parliamentary conviction, which was increasingly criticized as an arbitrary act, was abolished in 1870.
One of the best known examples of a Bill of Attainder was the condemnation by the House of Commons of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford , chief adviser to King Charles I of England, in 1641.
List of pronounced Bills of Attainder (selection)
- Hugh le Despenser , 1321
- Elizabeth Barton , 1534
- Adrian Fortescue , 1539
- Thomas Cromwell , 1540, Keeper of the Lord Seal of Henry VIII.
- Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury , 1541
- Catherine Howard , 1542
- Jane Boleyn , 1542
- Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley , 1549
- Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford , 1641, adviser to Charles I.
- William Laud , Archbishop of Canterbury, 1645
- Thomas Osborne, Lord Danby , 1679, Chancellor of the Exchequer of Charles II.
- Algernon Sidney , 1683, politician and political thinker, retired in 1688
- James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth , 1685, illegitimate son of Charles II.
- Lord Edward Fitzgerald , 1798, leader of the Irish Rebellion of 1798
literature
- Christoph Möllers : Classification of powers, legitimation and dogmatics in national and international comparative law . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-16-148670-6 ( Jus publicum 141, also: Heidelberg, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2003), p. 110.
- Bill of attainder . In: Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon 1894–1896, Volume 3, p. 7.