INFORMATION. An accusation or complaint made in writing to a court of 
competent jurisdiction, charging some person with a specific violation of 
some public law. It differs in nothing from an indictment in its form and 
substance, except that it is filed at the discretion of the proper law 
officer of the government, ex officio, without the intervention or approval 
of a grand jury. 4 Bl. Com. 308, 9. 
     2. In the French law, the term information is used to signify the act 
or instrument which contains the depositions of witnesses against the 
accused. Poth. Proc. Cr. sect. 2, art. 5. 
     3. Informations have for their object either to punish a crime or 
misdemeanor, and these have,.perhaps, never been resorted to in the United 
States or to recover penalties or forfeitures, which are quite common. For 
the form and requisites of an information for a penalty, see 2 Chit. Pr. 155 
to 171. Vide Blake's Ch. 49; 14 Vin. Ab. 407; 3 Story, Constitution, Sec. 
1780 3 Bl. Com. 261. 
     4. In summary proceedings before justices of the peace, the complaint 
or accusation, at least when the proceedings relate to a penalty, is called 
an information, and it is then taken down in writing and sworn to. As the 
object is to limit the informer to a certain charge, in order that the 
defendant may know what he has to defend, and the justice may limit the 
evidence and his subsequent adjudication to the allegations in the 
information, it follows that the substance of the particular complaint must 
be stated and it must be sufficiently formal to contain all material 
averments. 8 T. R. 286; 5 Barn. & Cres. 251; 11 E. C. L. R. 217; 2 Chit. Pr. 
156. See 1 Wheat. R. 9.