Your Information Is Criminal! Incompetent! Unchaste!

What does the phrase "libel of information" mean?

I just came across the phrase "libel of information" for the first time, and had to look it up. In case you were as ignorant of this as I was, the answer offered by Black's Law Dictionary is:

The complaint or initial pleading in an admiralty or ecclesiastical case.

But as best I can tell from glancing at some of the cases that use the term, it also more generally refers to the initial pleadings in a civil forfeiture case. The term is pretty common in old cases and even appears in some current statutes; but it has recently fallen, as they say, into desuetude -- a Westlaw query uncovers only 4 references since 2000.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.