INFORMATIO

1 definition found

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  INFORMATION. An accusation or complaint made in writing to a court of 
  competent jurisdiction, charging some person with a specific violation of 
  some public law. It differs in nothing from an indictment in its form and 
  substance, except that it is filed at the discretion of the proper law 
  officer of the government, ex officio, without the intervention or approval 
  of a grand jury. 4 Bl. Com. 308, 9. 


       2. In the French law, the term information is used to signify the act 
  or instrument which contains the depositions of witnesses against the 
  accused. Poth. Proc. Cr. sect. 2, art. 5. 
       3. Informations have for their object either to punish a crime or 
  misdemeanor, and these have,.perhaps, never been resorted to in the United 
  States or to recover penalties or forfeitures, which are quite common. For 
  the form and requisites of an information for a penalty, see 2 Chit. Pr. 155 
  to 171. Vide Blake's Ch. 49; 14 Vin. Ab. 407; 3 Story, Constitution, Sec. 
  1780 3 Bl. Com. 261. 
       4. In summary proceedings before justices of the peace, the complaint 
  or accusation, at least when the proceedings relate to a penalty, is called 
  an information, and it is then taken down in writing and sworn to. As the 
  object is to limit the informer to a certain charge, in order that the 
  defendant may know what he has to defend, and the justice may limit the 
  evidence and his subsequent adjudication to the allegations in the 
  information, it follows that the substance of the particular complaint must 
  be stated and it must be sufficiently formal to contain all material 
  averments. 8 T. R. 286; 5 Barn. & Cres. 251; 11 E. C. L. R. 217; 2 Chit. Pr. 
  156. See 1 Wheat. R. 9.