TURPITUDE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

TURPITUDEAuthored

The Law Mind • 1077 words

Definition

Turpitude, standing alone in legal usage, denotes inherent wickedness, baseness, or moral depravity. The term rarely appears in legal texts without its companion adjective: the operative legal concept is almost always "moral turpitude." As a standalone noun, turpitude functions as a general descriptor of conduct so contrary to justice, honesty, or accepted moral standards that the law treats it as disqualifying, aggravating, or impeaching in various contexts.

As used in the phrase "moral turpitude," the combined term of art refers to conduct that is inherently base, vile, or depraved — conduct that shocks the conscience of the community or violates the duties owed between persons or to society. The phrase carries significant legal consequences in at least three distinct domains: (1) immigration law, where a conviction for a crime involving moral turpitude (CIMT) can render a noncitizen inadmissible or deportable; (2) evidence law, where a witness's prior conviction for a crime involving moral turpitude may be used to impeach credibility; and (3) professional licensing and bar admission, where moral turpitude offenses can bar entry to a profession or result in discipline or disbarment.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Inherent baseness, depravity, or wickedness; corruptness and evilness. Also, an act evidencing such depravity.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Inherent baseness or vileness of principle, words, or actions; shameful wickedness; depravity.

The common meaning and the legal meaning track each other closely at the surface — both center on depravity and baseness. The gap is functional, not definitional. In ordinary language, turpitude is a moral characterization applied freely to persons, acts, or principles. In law, turpitude is a threshold classification that triggers specific, high-stakes legal consequences. The legal question is not whether conduct is morally bad in some general sense, but whether it falls within a judicially constructed category of offenses that courts have designated as involving "moral turpitude" — a category that has proven notoriously difficult to define consistently across jurisdictions and over time.

Common Confusion

The most persistent confusion surrounds the phrase "crime involving moral turpitude" (CIMT) and what it actually includes. Courts, immigration tribunals, and state bar boards have reached conflicting conclusions about whether specific offenses — fraud, theft, drug offenses, crimes of violence, statutory rape, tax evasion — qualify. The test is not simply whether the act was criminal or even serious. Some serious felonies have been held not to involve moral turpitude; some misdemeanors have been held to qualify. Researchers should not assume that a crime's severity maps onto its moral turpitude classification.

Turpitude should also not be confused with infamy. Historically, "infamous crimes" and "crimes involving moral turpitude" overlapped substantially but are not synonymous. Infamy carried specific common-law consequences affecting a person's capacity to testify or hold office. The two concepts evolved separately and are treated differently across jurisdictions and legal periods.

Why It Matters in Research

The term's primary research significance lies in tracking the CIMT concept across three bodies of law that developed largely independently — immigration, evidence, and professional regulation — and that use the same phrase to mean subtly different things.

In immigration law, the CIMT ground of inadmissibility and deportability has been interpreted through a layered body of federal administrative and judicial decisions. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) has long applied a "categorical approach" to determine whether a conviction qualifies, examining the elements of the offense rather than the underlying conduct. Researchers working in immigration materials should be alert to the tension between the categorical approach and the "circumstance-specific" inquiry recognized in certain contexts, as well as to statutory modifications under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

In evidence law, the common-law impeachment rule allowing use of prior convictions for crimes involving moral turpitude has been significantly modified or displaced in many jurisdictions by codified evidence rules. Federal Rule of Evidence 609, for example, structures impeachment by prior conviction without using the phrase "moral turpitude" at all. Researchers working across time periods will find the older common-law formulation alive in state courts well into the twentieth century and still operative in some jurisdictions today.

In professional licensing, the moral turpitude standard appears in state bar rules, medical licensing statutes, and teacher certification frameworks. The content of the category is set by state courts and administrative bodies and varies considerably. A conviction that triggers disbarment in one state may not in another.

Historical sources will frequently use turpitude in its standalone form as a synonym for moral turpitude without signaling the distinction. Researchers should treat both forms as pointing to the same substantive inquiry in most historical legal texts.

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical dictionary sources available for this entry are of limited direct utility. Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) captures the core classical formulation accurately: everything done contrary to justice, honesty, modesty, or good morals is said to be done with turpitude. This broad, Roman-law-inflected statement reflects the natural law origins of the concept — turpitude as deviation from virtuous conduct — and explains why the phrase proved so difficult to operationalize. The definition is accurate as far as it goes but offers no guidance on the line-drawing problem that dominates modern legal use.

The Anderson's Dictionary of Law entry included in the source material appears to have been misassigned; its content concerns the liability of tugboats and bears no relation to turpitude. It should be disregarded.

Black's first edition entry is truncated in the available source. Both Black's editions agree on the essential formulation, which tracks the common-law understanding without developing the CIMT category's later doctrinal complexity. Neither historical dictionary addresses the immigration law dimension, which emerged as the dominant legal context for turpitude analysis in the twentieth century and is now the term's primary operative field.

Jurisdictional Note

The content of "moral turpitude" as a legal category is not uniform. Federal immigration law, state evidence rules, and state professional licensing boards each apply their own versions of the standard. Common-law jurisdictions without a comprehensive evidence code may still apply the older CIMT impeachment rule directly. Researchers should identify which body of law is controlling before assuming that a definition drawn from one context transfers to another.

TURPITUDEmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

Everything done con-

TURPITUDEmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

[Everything done contrary to justice, honesty, modesty, or good morals is said to be done with turpitude.

TURPITUDEmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

Although a tug may not be a common carrier, liable as an insurer, nor required to use the highest degree of care and skill, she is bound to use reasonable care and skill, and to know the condition of the bottom and the depth of the water of the river she may be navigating.1 The rule that the tug is alone responsible for damares upon a collision between her tow and other vessels is applicable only when the tow is wholly under the control of the tug.2 The English authorities hold that a ship in tow of a tug is liable for injury to third persons though the direct fault may be that of the tug; the ship and her owners being treated as principals. In this country, under the law of principal and agent, the tug is held to be the sole principal, and the ship exempted, when her navigation is, by contract, exclusively in charge of the tug. See TOW-BOAT; COLLISION, 2; VOYAGE. Doing a thing against good morals, honesty, or justice; unlawful conduct; infamy. Latin, turpitudo. Allegans suam turpitudinem non est audiendus. One alleging his own infamy is not to be listened to. Nemo allegans suam turpitudinem est audiendus. No one who avers his own infamy is to be heard. A person cannot escape fulfilling an obligation by alleging bad conduct on his part. The maxim states the rule applied to a party who seeks to enforce a right founded upon an illegal or criminal consideration. Where there is turpitude, the law will help neither party." The meaning is that no one shall be heard in a court of justice to allege his own turpitude as a foundation of a right or claim; not, that a man shall not be heard who testifies to his own turpitude or criminality, however much his testimony may be discredited by his character. In Walton v. Shelley (1 T. R. 300), where an indorser was held not to be competent to prove that a note was void for usury in its inception, the maxim was plainly misapplied by Lord Mansfield. That was in 1786. In 1798, Lord Kenyon being chief justice, that case was overruled by Jordaine v. Lashbrooke (7 T. R. 601, 609), as to all instruments. The States are divided between the two cases. But the tendency is to disregard all objections to the competency of witnesses, and to allow their position and character to affect only their credibility. Where Walton v. Shelley is adopted, the rule is limited to negotiable instruments. A holder cannot invoke protection against an infirmity he has aided to create. But the rule is not applicable to a case between the original parties, where the paper had not been put into circulation and each party was cognizant of all the facts. There are many cases in which witnesses are admitted, though not compelled, to prove facts which show their turpitude; as, in the case of a particeps criminis, when credibility is for the jury. The maxim is more applicable to parties. See LEGAL, Illegal 1 Commonwealth v. Wilkinson, 16 Pick. 177 (1834), Shaw, C. J. See also Heyward v. New York, 8 Barb. 492 (1850). 2 Trist v. Child, 21 Wall. 452 (1874). 3 Davis v. Brown, 94 U. S. 425-27 (1875), Field, J.; 2 State ex rel. Priest v. Regents of University of WisBest, Ev. §§ 545-46. consin, 54 Wis. 159, 163 (1882). [Northam Bridge Co. v. London Ry. Co., 6 M. & W. *438 (1840), Abinger, C. B. Haight v. State, 32 N. J. L. 451 (1865), Haines, J.; State v. Haight, 30 id. 448 (1864). Winton v. Saidler, 3 Johns. Cas. 189, 192 (1802), Kent, J.; Powell v. Waters, 17 Johns. *180 (1819); Fox v. Whitney, 16 Mass. *121 (1819); Gould v. Gould, 3 Story, 541 (1844); 35 Pa. 527; 40 id. 156; 51 id. 376; 1 Greenl. Ev. § 383.

TURPITUDEn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

Inherent baseness or vileness of principle, words, or actions; shameful wickedness; depravity. Shak.

turpitudenoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

Inherent baseness, depravity or wickedness; corruptness and evilness. | An act evident of such depravity.

Explore the full Law Mind legal research platform.

Subscribe Encyclopedia Sign In