Definition
Temperance, in legal contexts, carries no fixed technical definition distinct from its ordinary meaning. Courts and legislators have borrowed the word from common usage rather than coined a specialized legal sense. As used in law—primarily in constitutional provisions, statutory titles, and judicial opinions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—temperance denotes habitual moderation in the indulgence of natural appetites, and in particular moderation (or, in its stronger form, abstinence) in the consumption of intoxicating liquors. The term anchored an entire body of legislation and social movement law before yielding, in later legal usage, to more precise terms such as "prohibition," "regulation," and "alcohol control."
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Self-restraint, especially with regard to alcohol; one of the four classical virtues. Also, colloquially, a given name and a tarot card.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Habitual moderation in regard to the indulgence of the natural appetites and passions; restrained or moderate indulgence; moderation; as, temperance in eating and drinking; temperance in the indulgence of joy or mirth; specifically, moderation, and sometimes abstinence, in respect to using intoxicating liquors."
Editorial note: The legal gap is one of scope, not meaning. In ordinary language, temperance is a broad moral virtue covering food, drink, passion, and conduct. In law, the word was progressively narrowed until it functioned almost exclusively as a shorthand for anti-liquor legislation and the political movement behind it. A researcher encountering "temperance" in a legal source should assume a liquor-regulation context unless the text expressly signals otherwise.
Common Confusion
Temperance is frequently conflated with prohibition, but the two carry distinct legal weight. Temperance, properly understood, implies moderation and regulatory control—licensing, restricted hours, local option laws. Prohibition implies total legal suppression of manufacture, sale, or possession. The temperance movement historically encompassed both camps, which is why nineteenth-century statutes bearing "temperance" in their titles range from mild licensing schemes to outright bans. Researchers who read "temperance law" as necessarily meaning "prohibition law" will misread many pre-Volstead sources.
Why It Matters in Research
Temperance is a navigational term as much as a legal one. Its importance to corpus research lies almost entirely in what it points toward rather than what it defines on its own.
Period sensitivity is critical. Sources from roughly 1830 to 1920 use "temperance" with high frequency and political charge. After ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 and the passage of the Volstead Act, "prohibition" displaced "temperance" as the operative legal word. Post-Repeal (post-1933) sources rarely use "temperance" except historically or in the names of surviving organizations. A search keyed to "temperance" will underretrieve post-1933 alcohol regulation materials almost entirely.
Index and headnote traps: Nineteenth-century legal digests and reporters often indexed alcohol-related cases under "temperance," "intoxicating liquors," "license," and "excise" without consistency. A researcher relying on any single heading will miss material filed under the others.
Constitutional dimensions: Many states adopted "temperance" language in their constitutions or enabling acts, granting localities "local option" power to regulate or ban liquor sales. These provisions survived national Prohibition's repeal and continued to operate at the state and local level. Some remain operative today under updated statutory labels. The original "temperance" constitutional provisions may still be the live authority behind modern alcohol control regimes.
Bouvier's cross-reference to "Liquor Laws" is the correct pivot. Researchers finding "temperance" in a legal source should follow that thread directly into liquor regulation doctrine rather than treating the term as substantively self-defining.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is frank about the term's legal thinness: "It has no fixed legal meaning as contradistinguished from its usual import." That acknowledgment is itself historically significant—it reflects the reality that courts in liquor cases were borrowing a moralistic vocabulary from the reform movement rather than applying a defined legal standard. Bouvier's quotes Webster's definition almost verbatim (citing 84 Cal. 123 as the vehicle by which that definition entered judicial usage), then closes with a bare cross-reference to "Liquor Laws." This entry is a relay, not a destination.
What Bouvier's does not capture is the sheer density of legislation that traveled under the temperance label—local option statutes, Sunday closing laws, druggist exemptions, club license schemes, and near-beer regulations—all of which generated substantial case law indexed under the temperance rubric. Researchers should treat Bouvier's entry as a period snapshot (late nineteenth century) that reflects the movement's peak influence on legal nomenclature without cataloguing its statutory output.
Jurisdictional Note
Temperance legislation was almost entirely a state and local matter until the Eighteenth Amendment federalized prohibition. Several states—Maine (1851), Kansas (1880), and others—adopted statewide prohibition decades before the federal amendment. Other states relied on local option frameworks. The word "temperance" in a legal source therefore carries different legal weight depending on the state and the decade.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Liquor Laws
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Prohibition