Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning counterfeiting — the fraudulent making or copying of something with intent to deceive or defraud. The term appears most commonly in the phrase contrafactio sigilli regis, the counterfeiting of the king's seal, which constituted a grave offense against royal authority. The term is a legal Latinism used in historical pleading, indictment, and legal writing rather than a term of active modern doctrine.
Common Confusion
Burrill notes that contrafactio is properly controfactio, with controfacere and controfactura as the more precise related forms. Researchers encountering variant spellings in manuscript sources or early printed legal texts should treat contrafactio, controfactio, and contrafactura as interchangeable references to the same underlying concept. The inconsistency in spelling reflects the loose orthographic conventions of Law Latin rather than any meaningful distinction in legal significance.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a research marker, not a living doctrine. Encountering contrafactio in a historical source signals that the surrounding text concerns either: (1) an offense against royal preroganda, particularly the counterfeiting of seals or instruments of royal authority; or (2) a broader allegation of fraudulent fabrication in the context of documents, currency, or official marks.
The primary research trap is assuming the term tracks modern counterfeiting law. It does not. Contrafactio belongs to a pre-statutory common law world in which the counterfeiting of the king's seal was treated as an offense close to treason — not merely as a species of fraud. Researchers using the Law Mind corpus should look upstream from any contrafactio reference to determine whether the underlying source is classifying the act as treason, felony, or misdemeanor, since that classification determines which body of historical law applies.
Spelling variation is a persistent navigational problem. Early legal records, abridgments, and treatises render the term inconsistently. A corpus search limited to a single spelling will miss relevant material. Run searches on contrafactio, controfactio, contrafactura, and controfactura as a set.
The term also marks a genre of source. Contrafactio appears in Cowell's Interpreter and Blount's Law Dictionary — both of which are interpretive glossaries of legal terms rather than authoritative treatises. This means the historical definitions are themselves secondary summaries of older practice, not direct expositions of the law. Treat them accordingly when tracing the original legal rule.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: contrafactio means counterfeiting. Black's (both editions) and Burrill converge on the same illustrative phrase — contrafactio sigilli regis, counterfeiting the king's seal — and all three cite Cowell as their authority.
Burrill adds a useful orthographic note absent from the Black's entries, flagging that the technically correct form is controfactio and directing readers to the related entries controfacere and controfactura. This is the only substantive divergence among the three sources, and it is editorial rather than substantive.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the severity of the offense or its procedural context. Counterfeiting the king's seal was not treated as ordinary fraud; it implicated the integrity of royal administration and, in certain formulations, approached high treason. The dictionary entries record the definition without illuminating the stakes. Researchers needing the legal consequences must go beyond these glossary sources to the underlying statutes and treatise literature on forgery and treason.
Jurisdictional Note
Contrafactio is an English law term with no meaningful transplant into American legal usage. It does not appear as operative terminology in American statutes or common law development. Researchers encountering it in American legal sources are almost certainly reading a text with English antecedents or a legal dictionary reproducing English authorities.