Definition
In the civil law, *infamare* means to defame — to attack or injure a person's reputation, character, or standing through words or writing. The term originates in Roman legal thought and appears in civil law sources as the act of bringing infamy upon another. It encompasses reputational injury inflicted by accusation, publication, or oral declaration.
The concept carries a notable internal qualification preserved in the Roman maxim: one who defames a guilty person is not to be condemned for doing so, because it is both right and proper that the crimes of the guilty be made known. This distinction — between actionable defamation of the innocent and permissible exposure of genuine wrongdoing — is embedded in the civil law treatment of the term from its earliest sources.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Infamare" has no standard English entry. It is a Latin verb meaning to make infamous, to bring into ill repute, or to slander.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as an English entry. The related English term "infame" (archaic) meant to defame or bring infamy upon.
The term is pure civil law Latin, borrowed directly from Roman sources into legal dictionaries. Researchers encountering it in translated or Latin legal texts should recognize it as the root concept behind both defamation doctrine and the civil law notion of *infamia* — the formal status of legal disgrace — but should not treat it as synonymous with either modern defamation or the technical status of *infamia* without further context.
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Common Confusion
*Infamare* (the act of defaming) is frequently conflated with *infamia* (the resulting legal status). These are related but distinct: *infamare* describes the conduct — the speech or writing that injures reputation — while *infamia* describes the formal civil law consequence imposed on certain persons as a matter of legal status, carrying disabilities in litigation, office-holding, and civic life. A person could commit the act of *infamare* without producing the legal status of *infamia* in the target, particularly where the defamed party was in fact guilty of the imputed conduct.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter *infamare* primarily in two contexts: Latin-language civil law texts and treatises drawing on Roman sources, and nineteenth-century Anglo-American legal dictionaries that imported civil law vocabulary. The term rarely appears in common law case reporters or statutes under this name, but its conceptual fingerprints are present wherever courts discuss the relationship between truth and defamation liability.
The embedded Roman maxim — that defaming the guilty is not actionable — is substantively important. It anticipates what the common law would later develop as the defense of truth (justification) in defamation actions. Researchers tracing the historical foundations of truth as a defense in Anglo-American libel law will find the civil law antecedent here.
Be cautious when reading nineteenth-century dictionary entries that treat *infamare* as equivalent to common law defamation. The civil law framework from which the term derives operated differently: reputational injury in Roman law was tied to *fama* as a quasi-property interest, and the consequences of *infamia* as a legal status had no direct common law parallel. A researcher reading Burrill or similar compilations must resist flattening the civil law concept into the common law tort.
The term also appears in ecclesiastical law contexts, where canonical proceedings could result in formal *infamia juris* or *infamia facti* — distinctions entirely absent from common law sources but relevant to research touching canon law, medieval legal practice, or church courts.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language source for this term and defines it cleanly: to defame, to attack or injure one's character by word or writing, citing Brissonius (Barnabé Brisson's *De Verborum quae ad Jus Pertinent Significatione*, a standard civil law lexicon). Burrill preserves the key Roman maxim in full Latin with translation, which signals that the term was being transmitted to Anglo-American legal readers with its civil law qualification intact.
Burrill does not attempt to map *infamare* onto specific common law causes of action, and that restraint is appropriate. The entry is purely expository, situating the term in the civil law tradition without claiming doctrinal equivalence. Researchers should note that Burrill's treatment reflects mid-nineteenth-century American legal scholarship's engagement with Roman and civil law sources — a broader intellectual project of the era — rather than active use of the term in domestic litigation.
No substantive divergence exists among historical dictionaries because coverage is essentially limited to Burrill and civil law lexicons. The absence of the term from common law dictionaries like Jacob's or Tomlin's is itself informative: it marks *infamare* as civil law vocabulary, not naturalized into the English legal lexicon.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term is operative in civil law jurisdictions and in historical legal scholarship drawing on Roman sources. It has no direct doctrinal role in modern Anglo-American common law, though its conceptual substance is absorbed into defamation doctrine. Researchers working in Louisiana, Quebec, or comparative law contexts will find the term and its related concepts more functionally relevant than those working in purely common law jurisdictions.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Defamation (for the common law and modern doctrine descended from the same conceptual root); Roman Law and Civil Law Tradition (for the broader framework in which *infamare* and *infamia* operate).
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