Definition
In legal usage, "contrary" means in opposition to, inconsistent with, or in violation of a rule, principle, statute, or established standard. It appears most commonly in fixed legal phrases rather than as a standalone term:
1. CONTRARY TO LAW: A finding, verdict, act, or instrument that conflicts with an applicable legal rule or statute. In the context of criminal indictments, the concluding phrase "contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided" signals that the charged conduct violates a specific legislative enactment.
2. CONTRARY TO THE EVIDENCE: A verdict or judgment that is unsupported by, or directly conflicts with, the weight of evidence presented at trial. Grounds for a motion for new trial or judgment notwithstanding the verdict.
3. CONTRARY TO PUBLIC POLICY: A contract, agreement, or act that conflicts with the interests of society or established principles of public welfare, rendering it unenforceable.
4. CONTRARY TO THE FORM OF THE STATUTE: A formal phrase in criminal pleading, indicating that the offense was committed in violation of a particular enactment, as distinguished from offenses at common law.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Contrarily; in an opposite direction or manner.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Opposite; in an opposite direction; opposed, contradictory, repugnant, or inconsistent.
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow in substance but significant in application. Ordinary usage treats "contrary" as a general antonym. Legal usage deploys it as a term of art within fixed phrases — "contrary to law," "contrary to the evidence," "contrary to public policy" — each of which triggers distinct procedural or substantive consequences. Recognizing which phrase a source is using is more important than understanding the word itself.
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Common Confusion
"Contrary to law" and "contrary to the evidence" are sometimes conflated in historical sources and appellate records, but they operate on different grounds. A verdict contrary to law conflicts with the applicable legal rules regardless of what the evidence showed. A verdict contrary to the evidence (or against the weight of the evidence) may be legally correct in form but factually unsupported. The distinction matters because the standard of review and available remedies differ between the two challenges.
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Why It Matters in Research
"Contrary" rarely appears in legal sources as a standalone substantive term. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively embedded in fixed phrases, and the phrase — not the word — is what carries legal weight.
When searching historical case reporters or digests, query the full phrase ("contrary to law," "contrary to the evidence," "contrary to public policy") rather than the isolated word. Digest compilers indexed these phrases separately, and results under one heading will not necessarily surface under another.
In criminal pleading research, "contrary to the form of the statute" is a formal charging requirement in many historical indictments. Its presence or absence affected the validity of the indictment in some jurisdictions; its meaning evolved as code pleading displaced common law forms in the nineteenth century. Sources written before and after that transition use the phrase differently.
"Contrary to public policy" presents the greatest research complexity. The content of "public policy" is jurisdiction-specific, era-specific, and subject-matter-specific. A contract declared contrary to public policy in an 1870 opinion may rest on social or moral assumptions that later courts rejected entirely. Historical dictionary sources treat this phrase briefly; the substantive doctrine must be traced through case law and equity treatises.
Anderson's cross-reference to AGAINST is worth following. Historical dictionaries frequently used "against" and "contrary to" interchangeably in legal phrases, and some digest systems indexed both under the same heading while others split them.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson's Dictionary of Law provides the most directly useful entry, defining a "verdict contrary to law" as one contrary to the principles of law applicable to the facts the jury was to try. This formulation is precise and consistent with appellate practice: the question is not whether the verdict seems wrong in the abstract, but whether it conflicts with the legal rules governing the specific facts at issue.
Rapalje & Lawrence does not provide a standalone entry for "contrary" but offers instructive phrase-level usage: "CONTRARY TO LAW, (in indictment)" with a citation to early Indiana reports. This confirms that historical dictionaries treated the term primarily as a component of technical phrases rather than as a definition-worthy term on its own.
Neither source addresses "contrary to public policy" with any depth — a significant gap, given that phrase's doctrinal importance in contract and equity cases throughout the nineteenth century. Researchers should not rely on these dictionaries for that doctrine.
Webster's 1913 definition (opposite, adverse, repugnant, inconsistent) maps cleanly onto the legal usage without significant divergence, which explains why historical legal dictionaries saw little need to define the term in isolation.
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Jurisdictional Note
The formal pleading phrase "contrary to the form of the statute" was required in common law indictments where the charged offense was purely statutory, but its necessity and effect varied across states as code pleading reforms took hold after the mid-nineteenth century. Some jurisdictions treated its omission as fatal to the indictment; others treated it as surplusage. Researchers working with pre-reform criminal records should check the pleading rules of the specific jurisdiction.
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