Bills Of Attainder in the United States

Introduction to Bills Of Attainder

A bill Of attainder is a legislative act that inflicts punishment without a court trial. Neither Congress nor the States can pass such a measure (Article I, Sections 9 and 10).

The ban on bills of attainder is both a protection of individual freedom and part of the system of separation of powers. A legislative body can pass laws that define crime and set the penalties for violation of those laws. It cannot, however, pass a law that declares a person guilty of a crime and provides for the punishment of that person.

The Supreme Court has held that this prohibition is aimed at all legislative acts that apply “to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial,” United States v. Lovett, 1946.

The Framers wrote the ban on bills of attainder into the Constitution because both Parliament and the colonial legislatures had passed many such bills. Bills of attainder have been rare in our national history, however.
United States v. Brown, 1965, is one of the few cases in which the Court has struck down a law as a bill of attainder. There it overturned a provision of the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959. That provision made it a federal crime for a member of the Communist Party to serve as an officer of a labor union.

Bills of Attainder and Ex Post Facto Laws in Constitutional Law

A list of entries related to Bills of Attainder and Ex Post Facto Laws may be found, under the Bills of Attainder and Ex Post Facto Laws category, in the United States constitutional law platform of this legal Encyclopedia.

Resources

Further Reading

• Information about Bills Of Attainder in the Gale Encyclopedia of American Law.