Definition
Intimidation is the act of threatening, coercing, or instilling fear in another person with the purpose of compelling that person to do something, or to refrain from doing something, they would otherwise have a legal right to do or not do. It operates at the intersection of criminal law, tort law, labor law, and constitutional doctrine, appearing as both a standalone offense and as an element within other offenses.
Three distinct legal uses deserve separation:
1. Criminal intimidation. As a criminal offense, intimidation involves the wrongful use of threats or fear-inducing conduct directed at a person to coerce that person's actions or omissions. The conduct must be wrongful — the threat itself, or the purpose behind it, must exceed lawful bounds. Mere hardball persuasion is not intimidation.
2. Intimidation as an element of another offense. Intimidation frequently appears as a constituent element in crimes such as robbery, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and voter intimidation. In these contexts, the prosecution must prove that the defendant's conduct was reasonably calculated to produce fear in the victim sufficient to overcome resistance or free choice. The defendant need not succeed in producing actual fear in every jurisdiction — the conduct must be of a character that would ordinarily produce fear in a reasonable person.
3. Civil intimidation. In tort, intimidation is recognized as a cause of action (particularly in Commonwealth jurisdictions) where a defendant threatens unlawful acts to coerce the plaintiff into suffering economic or other harm. The civil tort requires proof of a threat of an unlawful act, intent that the threat be acted upon, and resulting damage.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The act of making timid or fearful or of deterring by threats; the state of being intimidated.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of making timid or fearful or of deterring by threats; the state of being intimidated; as, the voters were kept from the polls by intimidation.
The common and legal meanings are close but not identical. In ordinary usage, intimidation describes a psychological state — feeling frightened or cowed — without regard to legality or purpose. In law, the term is narrower and more purposive: the threat or conduct must be wrongful and must be directed toward compelling a specific action or inaction. A person who feels intimidated by a powerful employer's legitimate business decision has experienced intimidation in the common sense but likely has no legal claim. The legal definition also imports an objective element — whether a reasonable person would be compelled by fear — rather than relying solely on the subjective experience of the victim.
Common Confusion
Intimidation is frequently conflated with duress and with threats. The distinctions matter for research:
Intimidation vs. duress: Duress is a defense to a contract or criminal charge, asserting that the defendant acted under compulsion. Intimidation is the wrongful act that may produce the conditions of duress. One party's intimidation may give rise to the other party's claim of duress, but they are not synonymous.
Intimidation vs. threats: A threat is the communication of intent to cause harm. Intimidation is a broader concept that may be accomplished by threats, conduct, displays of force, or other fear-inducing behavior, not necessarily verbal. Every threat may constitute intimidation, but intimidation does not require an explicit threat.
Core Elements
Where intimidation functions as a criminal offense or civil tort, courts and statutes generally require:
1. Wrongful conduct. The act, threat, or communication must be unlawful in itself, or the purpose to which it is directed must be unlawful. Lawful economic pressure does not become intimidation merely because it frightens the recipient.
2. Direction toward a specific person or class. Intimidation is not a generalized atmosphere of menace; it must be directed at a person, or that person's family or close associates, in a manner calculated to affect that person's conduct.
3. Coercive purpose. The conduct must be aimed at compelling action or inaction — getting the target to do something, or to refrain from doing something. This purposive element distinguishes intimidation from assault or harassment in many statutory schemes.
4. Reasonable tendency to produce fear. Most formulations require that the conduct be objectively capable of producing fear in a person of ordinary firmness, whether or not the particular victim was actually frightened.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Voter intimidation: A constitutionally and federally significant category, prohibiting conduct that prevents or discourages citizens from exercising their franchise. Federal statutes address this directly, and it carries distinct evidentiary and jurisdictional implications.
Witness intimidation: The coercion of witnesses, victims, or informants to prevent testimony or cooperation with law enforcement. Addressed at the federal level by 18 U.S.C. § 1512 and by parallel state statutes. This is among the most heavily litigated forms of intimidation in modern criminal practice.
Labor intimidation: The historical heartland of English statutory intimidation law, directed at coercive conduct by trade unions or employers during labor disputes. Still relevant in labor law research though the terminology has largely migrated to "coercion" and "unfair labor practices."
Juror intimidation: A subset of obstruction, involving threats or fear-inducing conduct directed at jurors during or after a proceeding.
Why It Matters in Research
The most significant research trap with intimidation is context collapse: the word appears across criminal, civil, labor, constitutional, and procedural law, often with subtly different elements and standards. A search pulling all instances of "intimidation" across a corpus will return results from incompatible legal frameworks. Researchers should anchor searches to the specific legal context — witness intimidation, voter intimidation, labor intimidation — rather than treating the term as a unified concept.
Historical sources, including Black's both editions and Bouvier's, frame intimidation almost entirely within the English statutory context of labor disputes under the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875. This framing reflects the political urgency of the trade union question in the Victorian period and should not be read as a comprehensive statement of the term's legal scope. American doctrine — particularly the constitutional dimensions of voter intimidation and the federal statutory treatment of witness tampering — is largely absent from these sources.
Anderson's is a signpost entry only, directing researchers to BOYCOTTING, DURESS, ELECTION, FEAR, and STRIKE. This reflects the reality that in many legal contexts intimidation appears as a component concept rather than a freestanding one. Following Anderson's cross-references is productive for historical research on labor and election law.
The connection between intimidation and free exercise of rights — whether the right to vote, testify, or engage in lawful commerce — is the thread that unifies the term's many appearances. Researchers working on obstruction, election law, or civil rights will encounter intimidation as a recurring operative element even when it is not the headline concept.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's are in substantial agreement, tracking the language of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 86, § 7) almost verbatim. All three sources define the offense in terms of wrongful violence or intimidation directed at compelling action or abstention from a legally protected act, and all three note that the statute was "chiefly directed against outrages by trades-unions." This consensus reflects the dominance of the labor question in late-nineteenth-century English legal discourse and explains why the historical entries feel narrow to a modern reader.
Bouvier's adds a slightly broader framing — "the act of intimidating or making fearful; the state of being intimidated" — before pivoting to the English statutory definition, giving it the most capacious opening of the four sources. Anderson's takes a different editorial approach entirely, treating intimidation as a cluster concept and directing users to adjacent entries rather than defining it independently. For the historical period, Anderson's cross-reference structure is actually the most useful navigational tool because it maps the term's relationship to surrounding doctrines.
What no historical source addresses: the American constitutional dimensions (First and Fourteenth Amendments, voting rights), the federal statutory framework for witness tampering, the civil tort of intimidation as developed in Commonwealth case law, or the use of intimidation as an element in robbery and related offenses. Historical sources should be used for background on the English statutory origin and for labor law history, but they are incomplete guides to how the concept functions in American law.
Jurisdictional Note
Intimidation statutes vary substantially across American states in their elements, mens rea requirements, and grading. Some states criminalize intimidation as a standalone offense with formal definitional elements; others fold the concept into harassment, menacing, or coercion statutes. Federal law addresses specific categories — witness, juror, and voter intimidation — through discrete statutory schemes rather than a general intimidation offense. English and Commonwealth sources, which dominate the historical dictionaries, should not be assumed to reflect American law without verification.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Witness Tampering and Intimidation (18 U.S.C. 1512), The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia