Definition
Of attainder is an archaic qualifying phrase historically appended to a person's status or legal condition to indicate that the individual had been attainted — that is, subjected to attainder, a legal consequence of conviction for treason or a capital felony. To be "of attainder" meant that a person had suffered the full civil and legal death associated with attainder: forfeiture of property, extinction of civil rights, and the doctrine of corruption of blood, by which the attainted person could neither inherit land nor transmit it to heirs.
The phrase most commonly appeared in compound constructions. A person described as "attaint" or as standing "of attainder" was civilly dead in the eyes of the law — incapable of bringing suit, holding property, or passing an estate. The condition was not merely penal but genealogical, reaching backward and forward through the bloodline.
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Common Confusion
"Of attainder" should not be confused with "bill of attainder." The bill was the legislative or judicial instrument that imposed the attainder; "of attainder" describes the resulting status of the person upon whom attainder had been visited. A person convicted under a bill of attainder stood "of attainder" — the bill was the cause, the status was the effect. Researchers working in historical sources will encounter both phrases and must distinguish between the procedural instrument and the personal legal condition it produced.
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Why It Matters in Research
This phrase belongs almost entirely to the pre-modern common law period and to English legal sources. American researchers encounter it most often in three contexts: (1) historical English materials on treason and capital felonies from the medieval through early modern period; (2) constitutional law research, particularly Fourteenth Amendment antecedents and the Art. I, § 9 and § 10 prohibitions on bills of attainder, where background understanding of what attainder meant is essential; and (3) property and inheritance disputes in colonial and early American sources, where forfeiture and corruption of blood doctrine left residual title problems.
The phrase is a marker of legal archaism. When it appears in a source, the document is either historical on its face or is citing to historical authority. Modern American law has no equivalent status — corruption of blood was abolished in England by statute in 1870, and the U.S. Constitution's Art. III, § 3 expressly prohibits Congress from working corruption of blood as a punishment for treason.
A key research trap: in early English and colonial sources, "attainted" and "convicted" are sometimes used interchangeably in general speech, but they are not the same. Conviction was the finding of guilt; attainder was the additional legal consequence that stripped civil existence. A person could be convicted without full attainder depending on the offense and the form of proceeding.
Corpus researchers should also note that the phrase appears in land records and title chains from colonial America and early state practice. Where an original grantor had been attainted (or had loyalist property confiscated under attainder-adjacent statutes during the Revolutionary period), title questions could persist for decades.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary treats "of attainder" in connection with its broader entry on attainder, situating the phrase as a descriptor of civil status following attainder proceedings. Black's correctly links the concept to corruption of blood and forfeiture, reflecting the traditional common law understanding inherited from Blackstone and Coke.
The historical dictionaries are broadly consistent on the substance of attainder itself, though they vary in the detail with which they treat "of attainder" as a discrete phrase versus a component of longer doctrinal treatment. What the historical sources tend to underemphasize — and what modern researchers need — is the distinction between the bill or judgment (the mechanism) and the status (the condition). Legal dictionaries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were writing for practitioners who already understood this distinction intuitively; modern researchers working backward through those sources do not share that background knowledge.
No historical dictionary source consulted fabricates the phrase as an independent term of art; it is uniformly treated as a status descriptor derived from the noun "attainder."
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Jurisdictional Note
The phrase has no operative meaning in modern American law. Its relevance in U.S. legal research is historical and constitutional. English law abolished corruption of blood by the Forfeiture Act 1870. American constitutional prohibitions on bills of attainder (Art. I, §§ 9–10) effectively foreclosed any revival of the doctrine at the federal or state level.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Bills of Attainder (for the legislative and judicial instrument); Corruption of Blood (for the inherited consequence that gave "of attainder" its most lasting practical effect on property and inheritance).
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