Definition
Intemperance, in legal usage, refers primarily to excessive indulgence in intoxicating liquors to a degree that impairs a person's capacity to function, meet obligations, or maintain domestic relations. The term appears most frequently in two legal contexts:
1. DIVORCE GROUND. Habitual intemperance as a statutory ground for divorce denotes a pattern of alcohol use so persistent and severe that it disqualifies the person, for a great portion of the time, from properly attending to business or domestic duties, or which would reasonably inflict a course of great mental anguish upon an innocent spouse. The emphasis is on habituality and consequence — isolated or occasional excess does not satisfy the standard.
2. INSURANCE AND BENEFITS. In life and accident insurance contexts, intemperance or habitual intemperance sometimes appeared as a policy exclusion or a condition affecting coverage, on the theory that chronic alcohol misuse constitutes a voluntary assumption of risk materially increasing the hazard insured against.
The term could theoretically encompass excess in any appetite or passion, but legal usage had narrowed it almost entirely to alcohol by the late nineteenth century.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Lack of moderation or temperance; excess. Also, specifically, drunkenness or gluttony.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of becoming, or state of being, intemperate; excess in any kind of action or indulgence; any immoderate indulgence of the appetites or passions. Specifically: habitual excess in drink.
The gap between common and legal meaning is one of degree and pattern rather than kind. Ordinary usage allows a single episode of excess to qualify as intemperance. Legal usage — particularly in divorce law — required proof of a habitual, established course of conduct. A researcher relying on the common or dictionary meaning risks underestimating the evidentiary burden that historical courts imposed.
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Common Confusion
Intemperance is sometimes used interchangeably in older sources with drunkenness, dipsomania, or inebriety. These are not synonyms in legal proceedings. Drunkenness describes a transient state; intemperance (in the legal sense) describes a settled pattern of behavior. Dipsomania carried clinical connotations of compulsive craving and appeared in medical-legal debates over whether habitual drunkards possessed the requisite volition for criminal responsibility or contractual capacity. Researchers should not assume that cases discussing one of these terms necessarily govern the others.
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Why It Matters in Research
HISTORICAL PERIOD DEPENDENCY. Intemperance as a legal category belongs overwhelmingly to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was a creature of statutory divorce grounds, temperance-era legislation, and Victorian domestic relations law. The term virtually disappears from modern family law codes, which either eliminated fault-based divorce altogether or replaced specific grounds with broader language such as "irreconcilable differences" or "cruel and inhuman treatment." Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century case law will encounter the term frequently; those working in modern family law codes will rarely see it.
EVIDENTIARY STANDARD. Courts split on what quantum of habitual use was required and whether the intemperance had to be the proximate cause of marital breakdown or merely a contributing factor. The California Civil Code definition cited in Black's 2nd edition required that intemperance "disqualif[y] the person a great portion of the time" — a functional-impairment test — while the alternative prong focused on mental anguish to the innocent party. Different jurisdictions weighted these prongs differently, and some required both. Researchers should not assume uniform standards across states.
INSURANCE CASES. When tracing insurance exclusion disputes involving intemperance, note that courts often had to determine whether a policy condition referred to a pre-existing habit or to conduct at the time of loss. The Mowry v. Home Life Insurance Co. line of cases (cited in Black's 2nd) addressed exactly this temporal question. These cases require careful reading of the specific policy language alongside the judicial gloss.
TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT INFLUENCE. The legal definition of habitual intemperance was shaped in part by the temperance movement's framing of alcohol use as moral failing, disease, and social threat simultaneously. This ideological context affected judicial reasoning in ways that are not always explicit on the face of opinions. Secondary sources on temperance-era law are useful companions to primary case research in this area.
CORPUS CONNECTIONS. This term connects naturally to divorce law collections, early statutory compilations, domestic relations treatises, and insurance law materials. It also appears in criminal law contexts (e.g., habitual drunkard statutes and competency determinations) and in equity proceedings involving guardianship or conservatorship of persons rendered incapable by chronic alcohol use.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary treat intemperance primarily through the lens of habitual intemperance, offering virtually identical definitions anchored to the California Civil Code. This narrow treatment is telling: by the time Black's was compiled, the legally operative concept was already the habitual form, and simple intemperance without habituality was legally unremarkable.
The definitions in both editions track a dual structure — functional disqualification from business, or infliction of mental anguish on an innocent party — that reflects the competing interests divorce law was protecting: economic productivity and domestic tranquility. Neither edition addresses intemperance in excess of alcohol (the common meaning's broader scope), confirming that legal usage had collapsed the term into its specific application.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the contested question of whether intemperance required willfulness. Courts were divided on whether chronic alcoholism, framed increasingly in medical terms as compulsion rather than choice, could satisfy the moral-fault premise that originally undergirded divorce-ground analysis. This is a significant doctrinal gap that the dictionary entries leave entirely unaddressed.
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Jurisdictional Note
Statutory definitions of habitual intemperance as a divorce ground varied by state, and some jurisdictions required the condition to have developed or worsened after marriage to be actionable. Researchers should consult the specific state statute in force at the time of the proceedings rather than relying on any single judicial definition as universally applicable.
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