Definition
Corruption of blood was a legal consequence of attainder — the civil death that followed conviction for treason or felony — under which the attainted person's bloodline was deemed permanently tainted in the eyes of the law. The practical effect was threefold: the attainted person could not inherit land or hereditaments from an ancestor, could not retain property already held, and could not transmit any estate by descent to heirs. The disqualification ran in both directions through the bloodline, meaning that innocent heirs — children, grandchildren — were stripped of inheritance rights they would otherwise have held, not because of anything they had done, but because of the corrupted legal status of their ancestor.
The doctrine was a creature of English feudal and criminal law, not a principle of natural law, and was explicitly rejected by the framers of the United States Constitution.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The doctrine in English common law that someone attainted of felony or treason has corrupt blood and so cannot inherit property and has no legal heirs.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; "corruption" in the general sense denoted putrefaction, moral depravity, or the act of making unsound.
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant: "corruption" in ordinary speech suggests moral failing or wrongdoing, and "blood" suggests biology. In legal usage, however, "corruption of blood" was an entirely technical term of property and inheritance law. It described not moral unworthiness but a formal legal incapacity — one that attached to innocent heirs by operation of law, not by any act of their own. A researcher encountering the phrase in historical sources should not read it as a character judgment but as a precise term of art describing the inheritance consequences of attainder.
Common Confusion
Corruption of blood is sometimes conflated with two related but distinct concepts. First, attainder itself: attainder was the cause; corruption of blood was one of the consequences, alongside forfeiture of property and civil death. The two terms are not synonymous. Second, corruption of blood should not be confused with modern uses of the word "corruption" in American law — bribery, public corruption, RICO — which share no doctrinal ancestry with this term.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is historically bounded and constitutionally abolished in the United States. Any researcher encountering it in American sources should treat it as either a historical artifact or as constitutional background explaining what the Framers were prohibiting.
The critical research anchor is Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that "no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted." This clause was a deliberate and targeted prohibition — the Framers knew the English doctrine and rejected it by name. Researchers reading founding-era debates, ratification documents, or early constitutional commentary will encounter the phrase in this context, not as operative law but as the thing being prohibited.
In English legal sources, the term is active through the early nineteenth century. It was abolished in England by two statutes: 3 & 4 William IV, c. 106, and 33 & 34 Victoria, c. 23. Researchers working with English chancery records, inheritance disputes, or attainder proceedings before those dates should treat corruption of blood as operative doctrine affecting the chain of title and heirship.
A navigational trap: Burrill's Law Dictionary entry for this term is partially corrupted in surviving texts, with Canadian feudal tenure material apparently interpolated into the definition. Researchers relying on Burrill alone for this term should cross-check against Black's or Bouvier's.
The doctrine also appears in American state court decisions of the nineteenth century, not as operative law but in the course of distinguishing English inheritance rules from American practice. The New York Court of Appeals decision cited in Black's 2nd Edition — Avery v. Everett — is a genuine example of this comparative reasoning.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries agree on the core doctrine. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's frame it identically: a consequence of attainder extinguishing the capacity to inherit, retain, and transmit property by descent. Bouvier adds the constitutional dimension explicitly, noting Article III, Section 3 — a useful addition that Black's first edition omits. Both editions of Black's confirm English abolition by the same two statutes.
Burrill's entry, as noted above, appears textually compromised in available versions, with feudal tenure material from what appears to be a Canadian or civil law context interrupting the definition mid-sentence. The core substance — extinguishment of the inheritable quality of blood following attainder — is consistent with the other dictionaries before the interpolation.
None of the source dictionaries explore the constitutional clause in depth. Researchers needing doctrinal analysis of Article III, Section 3 will need to move beyond these dictionary entries to constitutional commentaries, including Story's Commentaries on the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.
Jurisdictional Note
The doctrine has no operative legal force in the United States. Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution prohibits it explicitly as to treason; American courts have consistently treated the prohibition as extending the same principle throughout the criminal law. In England, the doctrine was abolished by statute in the nineteenth century. It survives today only as historical background and as constitutional text.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses corruption of blood as a historical doctrine. The following entries address related modern concepts that researchers may encounter when following the term into contemporary American law:
criminal_94: Bribery and Public Corruption (18 USC 201) — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia (relevant for distinguishing modern "corruption" from the historical term)
criminal_21: Inchoate Crimes — RICO — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia (relevant for the same reason; no doctrinal connection to corruption of blood)