Legal Definitions - despitus

despitus

In legal and historical contexts, despitus refers to:

• Contempt: A strong feeling of disapproval, disrespect, or scorn, particularly when directed towards a court, its officers, or its authority. It signifies a willful disregard or defiance of legal rules or orders.
• A contemptible person: An individual whose actions or character are considered despicable, worthless, or deserving of scorn and disdain.

Here are some examples illustrating the concept of despitus:

• Example 1 (Contempt): During a court hearing, a witness who had been subpoenaed to provide testimony repeatedly refused to answer direct questions, despite the judge's clear instructions and warnings about the legal obligation to cooperate. The judge, recognizing this defiance as a deliberate challenge to the court's authority, declared the witness's behavior to be an act of despitus, leading to a finding of contempt of court.

  This example illustrates the first meaning of despitus, where the witness's actions constituted contempt by showing willful disrespect and defiance towards the judicial process and the judge's authority.

• Example 2 (A Contemptible Person): A landlord was found to have intentionally neglected essential repairs in a low-income housing complex for years, creating unsafe and unsanitary living conditions for tenants, all while collecting rent. When these actions came to light, the community and legal advocates widely viewed the landlord as a despitus, a person whose callous disregard for human well-being made them deserving of profound scorn and moral condemnation.

  Here, despitus refers to the landlord as a contemptible person, someone whose unethical and harmful conduct makes them deserving of strong disapproval and disdain from others.