Definition
A statutory and common law term historically used to describe sexual acts criminalized on the grounds that they violated natural law or divine order. At its core, the phrase designated sodomy and buggery — anal intercourse, particularly between men, but often extended by courts and legislatures to encompass oral sex, bestiality, and other non-procreative sexual conduct. The precise scope of the offense varied substantially by jurisdiction and era.
The term was never a model of precision. Courts frequently stretched it beyond sodomy proper, and legislatures often left the content of "crimes against nature" statutes deliberately vague, relying on common law definition by incorporation — a drafting practice that generated significant constitutional litigation in the late twentieth century.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Any of various sexual deviations that, at one time or another, have been considered to be so unnatural as to be illegal.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; the phrase derives from natural law discourse, where acts contra naturam were understood as violations of the natural order as discerned by reason or divine command.
The gap between common and legal usage here is not a difference in meaning so much as a difference in consequence. Common usage treats the phrase as descriptive and historically conditioned; legal usage imposed criminal penalties, registration requirements, and civil disabilities. The legal term also carried technical scope questions — what acts were included, whether consent was a defense, whether the law applied to married couples — that the ordinary phrase does not implicate.
Common Confusion
Crime against nature is frequently used interchangeably with sodomy in legal texts, but the two are not always coextensive. Sodomy, at common law, referred specifically to anal intercourse. Crime against nature was often interpreted more broadly by American courts to include oral sex and bestiality, meaning a jurisdiction's crime against nature statute could encompass conduct that would not have constituted sodomy at English common law. Researchers should not assume the terms are synonymous when reading historical statutes or case reporters.
The term should also be distinguished from unnatural offense, lewdness, and crimes against public morals — related but distinct categories that appear in nineteenth and early twentieth century codes and may have different elements and penalties.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a significant trap for researchers working across time periods. Three distinct research problems arise:
First, vagueness as a feature. Crime against nature statutes were often deliberately under-defined, with legislatures assuming courts would supply content from common law. Whether a given act fell within the statute was litigated repeatedly, and results varied by state. A researcher reading a conviction record or indictment charging "crime against nature" cannot assume the underlying conduct without consulting the jurisdiction's case law at the relevant date.
Second, constitutional transformation. Lawrence v. Texas (2003) struck down criminal sodomy laws as applied to consensual adult conduct, but the term "crime against nature" persists in some state codes and, more importantly, continues to appear in older criminal records that affect sex offender registration, immigration status, and employment screening. Researchers working on collateral consequences of conviction will encounter this phrase in active legal contexts long after decriminalization.
Third, the Bouvier's entry retrieved in the source material is not a substantive entry on crime against nature — it is a passage from Bouvier's discussion of homicide degrees and statutory classification of crimes generally. This is a corpus artifact. Researchers should not rely on that passage as reflecting Bouvier's treatment of this term; the operative Bouvier definition is the brief entry equating crime against nature with sodomy or buggery, citing the Indiana reports.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary defines the offense tersely as buggery or sodomy. Bouvier's similarly equates it with sodomy or buggery, citing an Indiana appellate decision. Both sources reflect the nineteenth-century approach: define by reference to the common law offense rather than enumerate constituent acts.
What historical dictionaries miss is the significant divergence in American judicial interpretation. By the mid-twentieth century, many state courts had construed crime against nature statutes to reach oral sex — a construction that would have surprised early common lawyers, for whom buggery and sodomy had more bounded meanings derived from English ecclesiastical and common law. The dictionaries also do not capture the role these statutes played beyond criminal punishment: their use in civil commitment proceedings, in licensing and employment bars, and in immigration exclusion grounds.
The shift in social and legal meaning from the nineteenth century to the post-Lawrence era is sharp enough that a definition adequate for one period is misleading in another. Researchers reading historical sources should apply the historical definition; researchers tracing modern legal consequences should be alert to the constitutional changes that have hollowed out but not entirely eliminated the term's legal significance.
Jurisdictional Note
Scope and terminology varied widely across American jurisdictions. Some states used crime against nature as the statutory heading; others used sodomy, unnatural intercourse, or deviate sexual conduct. Following Lawrence v. Texas, enforcement against consensual adult conduct became constitutionally impermissible, but some states retained the statutory language. Researchers working on specific jurisdictions should consult the relevant state's appellate history to determine what acts the local courts had included within the term at the period under study.