Definition

1. Noun:
   • Cancellation of civil rights: The formal legal act of depriving a person of their fundamental rights as a citizen.
   • A state of legal non-existence: The condition of a person who is physically alive but whose legal rights and capacities (such as the right to vote, own property, or enter into contracts) are extinguished or severely curtailed by law, often as a consequence of a serious crime or conviction.

Examples of Usage

• Noun:
  • In some historical legal systems, a person convicted of treason could be declared in a state of civil death.
  • The concept of civil death, where a prisoner loses the right to sue or inherit property, is considered archaic in many modern jurisdictions.

Advanced Usage

• "to suffer civil death": to be subjected to the legal penalty of civil death.
  • Under the old law, felons would suffer civil death upon conviction.
• "imposition of civil death": the act of legally declaring someone in this state.
  • The judge's ruling included the imposition of civil death.

Variants and Related Words

• Civil disabilities (n): Specific legal incapacities resulting from a conviction, such as the loss of the right to hold public office. This is a related, often more modern, concept focusing on specific rights lost rather than total legal extinction.
• Attainder (n): A related historical legal doctrine, often involving civil death, where a person's civil rights and property were forfeited upon a sentence of death or outlawry for a felony or treason.

Synonyms

• Legal extinction: The termination of a person's legal personality.
• Civil incapacity: A state of being deprived of legal rights and capacities.

Related Phrases

• To be dead in law: An older phrase synonymous with being in a state of civil death.
  • After his conviction for piracy, he was considered dead in law.

Related Idioms

• A legal non-person: A modern descriptive term for someone whose civil rights have been completely nullified, analogous to the state of civil death.
  • Stripped of all his rights, he felt like a legal non-person in the system.

Noun

1. cancellation of civil rights
2. the legal status of a person who is alive but who has been deprived of the rights and privileges of a citizen or a member of society; the legal status of one sentenced to life imprisonment