Legality
Defined in 2 dictionaries — Black's (1891), Abbott (1879)
A Dictionary of Law
Henry Campbell Black · 1891
or LEGALNESS. Lawfulness.
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence
Benjamin Vaughan Abbott · 1879
1. The quality or virtue in an act, proceeding, instrument, relation, &c., of conformity to law. Usually, conformity to the law as an entirety is intended; the noun is not used (like the adjective legal, q. v.) with any special exclusion of equity. Thus, to say that a specified act was of doubtful legality would convey the idea very distinctly that the act might probably be prohibited by law, and would seldom or never suggest that it might be one sustainable peculiarly in equity. 2. In old English law, legality describes the civil condition of a legalis Tiomo^ q. v. Tomlins.