Definition
In legal and medical jurisprudence, impotence is the incapacity of the male to perform the act of copulation. At common law and in matrimonial causes, the term carried specific legal weight as a ground for annulment: a marriage could be declared void or voidable if one party was impotent at the time of the marriage and the condition was incurable.
The legal definition draws a firm distinction from sterility. Impotence refers to the physical inability to perform the sexual act itself; sterility refers to the inability to produce fertile reproductive elements. A person may be sterile but not impotent, and vice versa. This distinction mattered enormously in annulment proceedings, where only impotence — and not mere sterility — traditionally served as a recognized ground.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Powerlessness or incapacity generally; also, specifically, inability to copulate or beget children, erectile dysfunction.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Weakness; want of power; inability; feebleness. The medical sense was recognized but secondary to the general sense of powerlessness.
The legal meaning is considerably narrower than either common usage. In law, impotence is not a synonym for general weakness, infertility, or even erectile dysfunction in the clinical modern sense. Legal impotence is a term of art in matrimonial law meaning specifically the physical incapacity for penetrative intercourse at the time of marriage — a condition that, if incurable and undisclosed, could render the marriage voidable. Researchers importing the modern clinical or colloquial sense of the word into historical legal sources will misread the doctrine.
Common Confusion
Impotence and sterility are the primary conflation risk in this area. Historical sources — including some legal authorities — used the terms loosely or interchangeably, but the formal legal distinction is consistent: impotence goes to the capacity for the sexual act; sterility goes to reproductive fertility. The legal consequence followed only from impotence. Bouvier's draws this line explicitly, and modern annulment doctrine preserved it. A second confusion arises with the maxim impotentia excusat legem (impossibility excuses from the law), which appears in the same sources alongside the matrimonial doctrine but belongs to a wholly separate body of contract and obligation law. The word "impotence" in that maxim carries the broader Latin sense of incapacity or impossibility, not the medical meaning.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Bouvier's identifies several recognized gradations relevant to annulment proceedings:
Incurable impotence: The condition cannot be remedied; the traditional and most legally significant form, as it permanently defeated the object of marriage as understood at common law.
Curable impotence: Subject to medical remedy; courts were less uniform on whether curable impotence at the time of marriage sufficed as a ground for annulment.
Accidental impotence: Resulting from injury or external cause; relevant to questions of timing and whether the condition predated the marriage.
Temporary impotence: Transient in nature; generally insufficient as a ground for annulment given that the condition did not permanently impair the marriage.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in matrimonial law, annulment history, or family law jurisprudence should be alert to several navigational issues.
First, impotence as a legal ground for annulment was deeply embedded in ecclesiastical law and carried forward into common law divorce and annulment doctrine. Sources from before the late nineteenth century are operating within a framework in which marriage was understood partly in terms of its consummation, and courts required that impotence exist at the time of the marriage and be incurable — not merely that it develop afterward or be temporary. Post-marriage impotence was grounds for sympathy, not annulment.
Second, the shift in terminology across the twentieth century is significant. Modern statutes and family codes often replaced "impotence" with "inability to consummate" or similar phrasing, or folded the concept into broader grounds for annulment. A search for "impotence" in twentieth-century statutes may return fewer results than the doctrine's actual continued presence warrants.
Third, the gender asymmetry in the historical sources is real and worth tracking. Burrill's defines impotence explicitly as a male condition. Black's acknowledges the term has been used synonymously with sterility, which could apply to either sex — but the dominant legal usage was gendered male. Historical cases applying the doctrine to female incapacity for intercourse exist but are less uniformly discussed in the dictionaries.
Fourth, the maxim impotentia excusat legem appears in Coke's Littleton and in both editions of Black's immediately following the matrimonial definition. Researchers must distinguish the two uses of the word in the same sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources are in broad agreement on the core medical-jurisprudence definition but diverge on precision and scope. Black's (both editions) defines impotence as incapacity for copulation or propagating the species, but flags the synonym problem with sterility. Bouvier's is the most analytically careful, explicitly separating impotence (function of the organ) from sterility (fertility of reproductive elements) and offering the four-part typology of incurable, curable, accidental, and temporary — a breakdown that reflects actual judicial reasoning in annulment cases. Burrill's is the most restrictive, limiting the definition to want of procreative power in the male, which conflates the impotence/sterility distinction even as it genders the term.
Anderson's does not define the term substantively, instead cross-referencing imbecility and inspection of the person — the latter being the procedurally significant mechanism by which courts in some jurisdictions required physical examination to adjudicate impotence claims, a procedure with its own fraught history.
What the historical dictionaries largely omit is the procedural dimension: courts required evidence of impotence, the inspection procedure was controversial and was abolished or fell into disuse in many jurisdictions during the nineteenth century, and the evidentiary standards for proving incurable impotence were heavily contested. Researchers looking for the full doctrine need to move beyond the dictionary entries into treatises on domestic relations.
Jurisdictional Note
American states varied on whether impotence rendered a marriage void from the outset or merely voidable at the election of the other party. Ecclesiastical tradition treated it as grounds for nullity; American common law courts were not uniform. Some states codified impotence as a ground for annulment; others folded it into fraud-based grounds on the theory that concealment of impotence was a fraudulent inducement to marry.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Marriage and Annulment; Matrimonial Causes; Medical Jurisprudence.