Definition
Wilfully means doing an act intentionally, knowingly, and by deliberate choice — not by accident, mistake, or inadvertence. It describes a state of mind in which the actor is aware of what they are doing and consciously chooses to do it.
The term carries different weight depending on context:
1. In criminal pleading: Wilfully signals that the act was done on purpose, as opposed to carelessly or accidentally. Many offenses must be charged as having been committed wilfully, and the absence of the term in an indictment may be a defect.
2. In the law of negligence and tort: Wilfully can escalate beyond ordinary negligence. Wilful conduct implies a conscious disregard for the safety of others — an indifference to consequences that borders on the quasi-criminal, even if malice toward a specific victim is absent.
3. Wilfully distinguished from maliciously: The two are not synonymous. Wilfully implies that the act was intentional and deliberate; maliciously adds the further element of an evil or wrongful motive. An act can be wilful without being malicious.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Willingly, of one's own free will; deliberately, on purpose.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Done by design; obstinate; perverse; governed by will without yielding to reason.
The legal meaning largely tracks the common meaning — both center on deliberateness — but legal usage introduces a technical distinction. In law, wilfully does not merely mean "on purpose"; in certain contexts it also imports a degree of obstinate or stubborn purpose, and in tort law it can describe a heightened recklessness distinct from both simple negligence and express malice. The Webster's sense of "governed by will without yielding to reason" is closer to the tort usage than the everyday conversational sense, which is a useful pointer for reading older judicial opinions.
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Common Confusion
WILFULLY vs. MALICIOUSLY: These terms are frequently paired in criminal statutes and indictments, and courts and practitioners have historically conflated them. They are distinct. Wilfully means the act was done intentionally, with knowledge and deliberate purpose. Maliciously adds the ingredient of an evil or corrupt motive — ill will, spite, or a wrongful objective beyond the act itself. Bouvier's draws this line explicitly, noting that wilfully does not imply an evil mind.
WILFULLY vs. KNOWINGLY: Modern criminal codes (particularly after the Model Penal Code influenced statutory reform) often distinguish these as separate mens rea levels. Knowingly means the actor was aware that a result was practically certain to follow. Wilfully — especially in older statutes and common law pleading — tends to be used more broadly to encompass both knowing and purposeful conduct. Researchers working across time periods should not assume these words are interchangeable.
WILFULLY vs. WANTONLY/RECKLESSLY: In the law of negligence, wilful, wanton, and reckless are sometimes treated as a single escalating standard and sometimes as distinct gradations. Wilful conduct, at the high end, involves conscious intent or conscious disregard; wanton may imply indifference without specific intent. Jurisdiction and era determine which formulation controls.
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Why It Matters in Research
Wilfully is a term that has migrated across doctrinal contexts — criminal pleading, tort, and statute — with its meaning shifting significantly depending on the source, jurisdiction, and era. Several research traps apply:
Pleading requirements: In older common law indictments, the word wilfully was formally required for certain charges. Its absence could be grounds for challenge. When reading pre-twentieth-century criminal records or treatises on criminal pleading (such as Archbold), pay close attention to whether wilfully appears in the charging instrument and what consequence courts attached to its omission or inclusion.
Gradation in negligence law: The phrase "wilful and wanton" appears throughout tort law as a category between ordinary negligence and intentional tort, affecting damages, contributory negligence defenses, and immunity doctrines. These doctrinal functions vary considerably by jurisdiction and time period.
Statutory interpretation: Federal and state statutes use wilfully with varying precision. Courts have struggled with what wilfully means in regulatory and tax contexts, sometimes requiring only intentional commission of the act and sometimes requiring knowledge that the act was unlawful. Researchers reading cases interpreting a specific statute should not import the definition from an adjacent doctrinal area.
Spelling variation: The term appears as both wilfully (one l) and willfully (two l's) in historical and modern sources, with no substantive legal difference between the spellings. Search strategies for older corpus materials should account for both forms.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's offers two distinct definitions that illustrate the doctrinal range of this term. In the first, wilfully describes conduct constituting an absence of all care and precaution for the safety of others — a tort-inflected definition situating the term in the realm of quasi-criminal negligence. In the second, Bouvier's shifts to the criminal pleading context: wilfully means intentionally, as required in charging certain offenses, and in particular means "intentionally and not by accident" when used in an indictment for wilful killing.
The explicit distinction Bouvier's draws between wilfully and maliciously is historically important and well-supported. Malice implies an evil mind; wilfulness does not require one. This was a live issue in nineteenth-century criminal practice, and Bouvier's correctly flags it.
What Bouvier's does not address is the modern statutory complexity: twentieth and twenty-first century legislatures and courts — particularly in the United States federal system — have layered additional precision onto wilfully, sometimes requiring not just intentional conduct but awareness of legal wrongfulness. That development postdates the historical dictionaries and is not captured in the Bouvier's entries.
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Jurisdictional Note
In U.S. federal criminal law, wilfully has been interpreted in some contexts to require that the defendant knew their conduct was unlawful — a higher bar than mere intentionality. State courts are less uniform and many retain the traditional common law meaning of intentional or deliberate conduct without the knowledge-of-illegality overlay. Researchers should not assume a single federal gloss applies across all statutory contexts or to state law materials.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Mens Rea; Criminal Intent; Negligence (Degrees of)
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