Unless the people I’m talking to are lawyers or professional historians, I’ve discovered that mentioning the words “bill of attainder” receives, at best, blank looks and, at worst, an ...

Peck (1810), and that “[t]he term ‘bill of attainder’ in the National Constitution is generical, and embraces bills of both classes,” Drehman v. Stifle (1869).

The very phrase “bill of attainder” seems like some quaint archaism that we cannot help suspect really has very little to say about our lives today. But this is a mistake.

Marshall and his successors saw the Bill of Attainder Clause as an element of the separation of powers. As the decisions of the Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803) and United States v.

A bill of attainder, however, as defined by so respectable a body as the Supreme Court of the United States, “Is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without judicial trial.” (Cummings ...