Bill of Attainder
Under a Bill of Attainder (also Act or Writ of Attainder ) was understood in English common law a criminal conviction of a person by the Parliament. Parliament acted in the process, of which only in extremely rare cases, use has been made, instead of an ordinary Court and its members as jurors. Through a Bill of Attainder previous court orders could be canceled. The judgment of the Parliament, however, needed to be confirmed by the king. The process was generally no legal but a political act in the U.S. Constitution were Bills of Attainder intervened as a violation of separation of powers, the executive and legislative branches in the competence of the judiciary, banned from the outset. In England, the possibility of a parliamentary condemnation that has been increasingly criticized as arbitrary act of 1870 abolished.
One of the best known examples of a Bill of Attainder was the conviction of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, the most important advisor to King Charles I of England, by the House of Commons in 1641.
List of Bills of Attainder pronounced (selection)
- Hugh le Despenser, 1321
- Elizabeth Barton, 1534
- Adrian Fortescue, 1539
- Thomas Cromwell, in 1540, Lord Privy Seal Henry VIII
- Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury, 1541
- Catherine Howard, 1542
- Jane Boleyn, 1542
- Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, 1641, advisor to Charles I.
- William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1645
- Thomas Osborne, Lord Danby, 1679, Chancellor of the Exchequer by Charles II
- Algernon Sidney, 1683, politician and political thinker, 1688 withdrawn
- James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, in 1685, the illegitimate son of Charles II
- Lord Edward FitzGerald, in 1798, leaders of the Irish rebellion of 1798