M ISD EM EAN 0 R. A term used to express every offence inferior to felony, punishable by indictment, or by particular prescribed proceedings. In its usual acceptation, it is applied to all those crimes and offences for which the law has not provided a partic ular name.
It has a common-law, a parliamentary, and a popular sense. In • a parliamentary sense, as applied to officers, it means mal administration or misconduct, not necessarily indictable. Demeanor is and mis demeanor is misconduct; in the business of one's office. It must. be in matters of im portance, and be of a character to show wilful disregard of duty ; 6 Amer. Law Reg. (N. S.) 649; State v. Hastings, 37 Neb. 96, 55 N. W. 774.
The test whether or not a certain crime is a crime at common law, is, not whether precedents for so treating it can be found in the books, but whether it injuriously affects the public policy and economy; Corn.
v. McHale, 97 Pa. 397, 39 Am. Rep. 808, fol lowed in Com. v. Randolph, 146 Pa. S3, 23 Atl. 388, 28 Am. St. Rep. 782, where it was held that a solicitation to commit murder meets this test.
The word is generally used in contradis tinction to felony; misdemeanors compre hending all indictable offences which do not amount to felony, as perjury, battery, libels, conspiracies, and public nuisances, but not including a multitude of offences over which magistrates have an exclusive summary ju risdiction, for a brief designation of which our legal nomenclature is at fault. Mis demeanors have sometimes been called mis prisions. See 1 Bish. Cr. L. § 624. See FELONY ; CRIME ; MERGER.
Military law makes no distinction between felony and misdemeanor.