Definition
Not proceeding from the true source; not genuine; counterfeit or false in origin. In legal contexts, SPURIOUS carries two principal meanings:
1. Of a document, instrument, or currency: Falsely made or issued so as to appear genuine, but not proceeding from the authentic source it purports to represent. A spurious instrument is not merely altered or forged — it may be technically well-executed while still being fundamentally fraudulent in origin.
2. Of persons or lineage (historical): Born outside of lawful marriage; illegitimate. In this sense, "spurious issue" referred to children born of parents who could not lawfully marry, as distinguished from children born of a valid union. This usage is now largely obsolete in American law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): False, not authentic, not genuine; also extraneous or irrelevant; or bastardly, illegitimate.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not proceeding from the true source, or from the source pretended; not genuine; false; adulterate. Also not legitimate; bastard.
The common English meaning tracks the legal meaning closely, but the legal use of SPURIOUS is more precise — particularly in the law of commercial paper and currency. Ordinary usage treats spurious and counterfeit as rough synonyms. Legal usage distinguishes them. A document can be spurious without being a simple forgery, and a forged document is not necessarily spurious. The distinction matters in criminal and commercial contexts where the specific charge or legal consequence turns on exactly how a false instrument was made.
Common Confusion
SPURIOUS vs. FORGED vs. COUNTERFEIT: These three terms are frequently treated as interchangeable in ordinary speech but carry distinct meanings in legal analysis, particularly as applied to bank notes and negotiable instruments.
A FORGED instrument bears a false signature — the name of a real person signed without authority. A COUNTERFEIT instrument is made to resemble a genuine instrument, typically through an imitation plate or process. A SPURIOUS instrument occupies a more complex category: it may be a legitimate impression from a genuine plate bearing fictitious or unauthorized signatures, an illegitimate impression from a genuine plate, or an impression from a counterfeit plate with unauthorized signatures. Critically, Anderson's Dictionary of Law notes that an instrument may be both counterfeited and spurious, or both counterfeited and forged, but it cannot be both forged and spurious — because forgery requires real names used without authority, while spuriousness involves fictitious or wholly unauthorized origination.
Researchers encountering these terms in historical indictments, banking statutes, or currency cases should not assume the terms were used with precision. Older sources often blur these distinctions.
Why It Matters in Research
The legal significance of SPURIOUS is most acute in two research areas: the law of negotiable instruments and historical currency regulation, and the now-obsolete law of illegitimacy.
In banking and currency law, the distinction between spurious, forged, and counterfeit instruments was outcome-determinative in criminal prosecutions and civil disputes over bank liability. A bank's obligation to its depositors, and the criminal exposure of a defendant, could turn on which category a false note fell into. Researchers working in pre-Federal Reserve banking law, state bank regulation, or 19th-century criminal codes will encounter these distinctions repeatedly and must resist the temptation to treat the terms as synonymous.
In family law research, SPURIOUS as applied to persons (spurious issue, spurious children) appears in older probate records, intestacy disputes, and inheritance cases. This usage largely disappeared from American statutory and case law as "illegitimate" became the preferred term, and later as legal distinctions based on legitimacy were substantially eroded by constitutional doctrine. A researcher finding "spurious" in a 19th-century will or estate case should understand it as a status designation with significant inheritance consequences under the law of that time and jurisdiction — not merely a pejorative.
Trap for researchers: The term's dual application — to documents and to persons — means that context is essential. "Spurious" in a criminal case file almost certainly refers to a false instrument; "spurious" in a probate or family law record almost certainly refers to illegitimate parentage.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on the core definition: not proceeding from the true source; not genuine; counterfeited. Both editions of Black's and Anderson's converge on this formulation.
The more instructive material lies in the elaboration. Anderson's Dictionary of Law offers the clearest analytical framework for the bank-bill context, articulating the logical relationship between spurious, forged, and counterfeit as non-overlapping (in part) categories. The 2nd edition of Black's provides a partially preserved illustration of a spurious bank bill — a legitimate impression from a genuine plate bearing unauthorized or fictitious signatures — that helps operationalize the definition in a way the bare text does not.
What the historical dictionaries largely omit is the constitutional and common-law evolution of the illegitimacy meaning. The "spurious issue" usage receives no substantive treatment in these sources, appearing only as a passing reference. Researchers relying solely on these entries would not understand that "spurious" as applied to persons carried real legal consequences in intestacy, inheritance, and family law that varied substantially across jurisdictions and changed significantly over the 19th and 20th centuries.
Jurisdictional Note
The distinction between spurious, forged, and counterfeit instruments was not applied uniformly across jurisdictions or time periods. State banking statutes and criminal codes varied in how they defined and categorized false instruments, and some used these terms loosely or interchangeably. Federal currency law developed its own vocabulary. Researchers should look to the specific statutory language of the relevant jurisdiction rather than assuming a uniform common-law definition governed.