Privilege From Arrest Law and Legal Definition
A congressman or member of a state legislature is not privileged from arrest for the commission of a criminal offense. The constitutional privilege of senators and representatives from arrest in all cases "except treason, felony and breach of the peace" during their attendance at the session and in going to and returning from the same, confers merely a privilege from arrest in civil cases, as the terms of the exception from the privilege comprehend all criminal offenses. This was the construction of those words in England, as applied to parliamentary privilege, and American constitutions, using these same identical words, use them in the sense which they had been settled to mean in England.
