castle doctrine

noun

variants or less commonly castle rule

plural castle doctrines also castle rules

law

: a legal rule or doctrine that a lawful occupant of a home has no duty to retreat from an intruder when acting in self-defense or in the defense of another in the reasonable belief that they are in danger of death or bodily harm

And when three people broke in about 3 a.m., Whitfield shot one of them, leaving the man dead on the kitchen floor. Police investigated the shooting, but Whitfield never really faced the prospect of prosecution. Missouri's expanded self-defense law, passed in 2007 and known as the castle doctrine, not only protected him from being charged but meant he couldn't be sued over his actions that night.

—Kim Bell

After Florida's passage of a castle doctrine law in 2005, 31 states followed suit and now protect the right of homeowners to defend their property from intruders.

—Patrik Jonsson

Examples of castle doctrine in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

In March, Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted that Texans have a right to defend themselves from squatters through the Texas castle doctrine. —Marley Malenfant, Austin American-Statesman, 18 July 2024

Arizona already had a stand-your-ground law, known as a castle doctrine, which allows people to use deadly force against trespassers to protect their home. —Seyward Darby, Longreads, 20 Nov. 2024

Geoffrey Corn, a professor at Texas Tech University's School of Law, explained in a Newsweek article that the Texas castle doctrine does not justify violence. —Marley Malenfant, Austin American-Statesman, 18 July 2024

Ohio, Wisconsin, and North Dakota, however, extend the castle doctrine to one’s personal vehicle. —Cedric Dark, WIRED, 14 Sep. 2024

Lawmakers should repeal them and revert to a more limited use of the castle doctrine to prevent the deaths of their constituents. —Cedric Dark, WIRED, 14 Sep. 2024

The castle doctrine permits a person who is in his or her home to defend it and themselves from harm without any duty to retreat to safety. —Cedric Dark, WIRED, 14 Sep. 2024

Florida in 2005 passed its stand-your-ground law, which expanded the right to defend one’s home from intruders — known as castle doctrine — into a more general right to use force in any public place. —María Luisa Paúl, Washington Post, 28 June 2023

A number of states have enshrined the castle doctrine in statutory law, sometimes with slightly different guidelines for when deadly force can be used. —Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN, 18 Apr. 2023

Word History

Etymology

from the proverbial expression "an Englishman's/a man's home is his castle," with many variants, articulated in legal contexts since the sixteenth century in both English and Anglo-French

First Known Use

1892, in the meaning defined above