DE FACTO (Lat.). A legal phrase, signify ing actual, based on fact; as distinguished from de jure. which means based on law. It is con moldy employed of the occupancy of public ()thee or the exercise of political or other authority without legal warrant or by one whose legal title thereto is defective. Under a government of law, a merely de facto authority may always be impeached, the proper legal remedy in Eng land and in the United States hcing by the com mon-law writ of quo wa•ranio, issued by a court of competent jurisdiction, to bring the offender into court and inquire 'by what warrant' lie has presumed to exercise the office or authority in quest ion.
Used in this general sense, as opposed to a dr jure, or lawful, authority, the exercise of de facto authority is always a usurpation, and it maintains this character so long as it continues, or until it is legalized by proper legislative or other authority. Any public ofliees administra tive, legislative, or judicial. may lie usurped and its powers exercised by de facto authority: but the phrase has no application to the ease of an excessive or other illegal exercise of power by a duly constituted authority. does not amount to an assumption of any other office than that which it Nor does mere usurpa tion of an office without the actual exercise of its funetions constitute the usurper an °dicer dr facto. The authority claimed must be effeetive and actually exercised in order to give it the dr facto character.
It is in this general sense of a power netuall• exercised, but without legal authority, that the term dr facto is employed in international and constitutional law. It is thus applied to a
revolutionary government, as the Continental Congress—whose nets gained legal sanction through the success of the Colonies and the recog nition of their independence by Great Britain or the President and Congress of the Confed erate States whose de facto exercise of author ity gained for them a certain measure of inter tuitional recognition, but remained to the end, in point of law, an illegal usurpation. Acts per formed by such an authority are wholly void and may he impeached in any proceeding, direct or collateral.
In administrative law, however, the tern] de facto is commonly used in a narrower sense. to describe the exercise of illegal authority, but with apparent right and under color of legal authority. The acts of an officer thus acting have a certain validity, so far as the interests of the public and of third persons are concerned. and cannot be questioned in any collateral pro ceeding. But they may be directly impeached— as by a refusal to recognize the de facto author ity, or by instituting proceedings to test the usurper's title to the office exercised by him, or, at the common law, by a civil suit for the wrongful intrusion into office or for the profits thereof taken by the usurping official. But the mere possession of an office is prima facie evi dence of a valid title thereto, and do facto authority is presumed to be de jure also, until the eontrary is made to appear in an appropriate proceeding instituted for that purpose. See Au LAW ; OFFICE; also the authorities there referred to.