Habit and Repute

Habit and Repute, a phrase used in Scotch law to denote something so notorious that it affords strong and generally conclusive evidence of the facts to which it refers. The best-known example of this is where a man and woman cohabit as husband and wife, and are reputed by the neighbours to be married, in which case the law of Scotland accepts the cohabitation and the proof by public opinion as evidence that a marriage has been contracted by the parties by the interchange of consent. In England no such doctrine prevails, and the marriage would have to be proved in the usual way, if called in question, by a suit which directly raises such question, though the parties had all their lives lived together as man and wife.—There is also in Scotland an application of the doctrine of habit and repute to persons when convicted of stealing; for if the individual is a habit and repute thief—i.e. a notorious thief—the repute that the accused gets his livelihood or supplements it by thieving is technically an aggravation of the offence, and may be charged and proved as such; nor is it necessary to the establishment of such a charge that the accused should have been previously convicted. In England and Scotland a somewhat similar effect is produced more circuitously, by proving that the thief has been several times previously convicted (is a 'habitual criminal'), in which case he is generally punished by a severer sentence.