Definition
A formal legal proceeding brought by a state prosecuting officer against a person who has unlawfully entered upon or occupied land belonging to the public domain. It is the government's procedural vehicle for reclaiming public lands from unauthorized occupants — functioning as a sovereign's assertion of title against an intruder, analogous to an ejectment action but initiated by the state rather than a private party.
The term pairs "information" in its older procedural sense — a criminal or quasi-criminal complaint filed by a public officer without a grand jury indictment — with "intrusion," referring to the wrongful entry upon lands to which another holds superior title. Together, the phrase names the specific instrument by which the sovereign enforced its possessory rights over public lands.
Common Confusion
The word "information" here does not mean data or notice. In historical legal usage, an information is a formal accusation or complaint filed directly by a prosecuting officer, bypassing grand jury presentment. Researchers encountering "information of intrusion" in historical records should not read it as a notice or disclosure requirement. Separately, "intrusion" in this context is a property concept — wrongful entry upon land — not the privacy tort of intrusion upon seclusion recognized in modern law. The two uses of "intrusion" are entirely unrelated in origin and application.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is nearly exclusively a creature of historical American and English law governing public lands. Researchers will encounter it most often in nineteenth-century state court records, land office proceedings, and statutory compilations from states with significant public domain history — Massachusetts and Virginia being among the jurisdictions represented in the historical sources.
Several navigational traps exist. First, because the proceeding was quasi-criminal in form (an "information" filed by a prosecuting officer) but civil in purpose (recovery of land), it may be indexed inconsistently across historical court records — sometimes in criminal dockets, sometimes in civil or equity records. Researchers should check both. Second, the term has effectively disappeared from modern legal practice; federal public lands disputes are now governed by administrative and statutory frameworks that do not use this nomenclature. Finding the term in a modern source would be unusual and warrants scrutiny. Third, do not conflate this proceeding with the modern privacy tort bearing the word "intrusion" — the doctrinal lineage is entirely separate.
For corpus researchers working on public land history, this term connects to the broader cluster of sovereign land recovery tools including quo warranto (challenging unlawful exercise of a franchise or privilege) and ejectment. The information of intrusion is distinguished from ejectment primarily by its public-law character: the sovereign, not a private title-holder, is the moving party.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's agree precisely in their definitions, both describing the proceeding as one "instituted by the state prosecuting officer against intruders upon the public domain" and both citing the same two primary authorities: 3 Pick. 224 (a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision) and 6 Leigh 588 (a Virginia decision). This convergence suggests the term had a settled, narrow meaning by the time both dictionaries were compiled, and that its primary jurisdiction-specific development occurred in Massachusetts and Virginia.
Rapalje & Lawrence takes a different approach, cross-referencing to a broader "Information" entry rather than providing a standalone definition. This editorial choice reflects the term's derivative character — it is a specific species of the genus "information" rather than a fully independent doctrine. Rapalje's treatment is less useful for substantive understanding but confirms that practitioners of the era would have understood the term as a subcategory within information practice generally.
None of the three sources addresses the procedural mechanics in detail — the form of pleading, the burden of proof, or the remedies available upon a successful proceeding. Researchers needing that level of detail must consult the underlying case law and period statutory compilations directly.
Jurisdictional Note
The surviving case authority clusters around Massachusetts and Virginia, and the Massachusetts General Statutes (c. 141) provided a statutory basis for the proceeding. Other states with large public domains may have employed analogous proceedings under different names. Federal public land law developed along separate statutory lines and does not use this term.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The privacy tort bearing the word "intrusion" is addressed in torts_127: Defamation and Privacy Torts — Invasion of Privacy — Intrusion upon Seclusion (The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia). That entry covers a doctrinally unrelated concept but is useful for researchers who need to distinguish the historical property proceeding from modern privacy doctrine.