The act of usurping, or of seizing and enjoying; an authorized, arbitrary assumption and exercise of power, especially an infringing on the rights of others; specifically, the illegal seizure of sovereign power; commonly used with of, also used with on or upon; as, the usurpation of a throne; the usurpation of the supreme power. "He contrived their destruction, with the usurpation of the regal dignity upon him." "A law (of a State) which is a usurpation upon the general government." "Manifest usurpation on the rights of other States." Note: Usurpation, in a peculiar sense, formerly denoted the absolute ouster and dispossession of the patron of a church, by a stranger presenting a clerk to a vacant benefice, who us thereupon admitted and instituted.
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