FORGERY AND THE END OF THE ‘BLOODY CODE’ IN EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 683-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHIL HANDLER
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
Penal Reform ◽  
Short Space ◽  
The Law ◽  
New Perspective

Penal reformers in the 1810s and 1820s condemned the English criminal law as a ‘bloody code’: a monolithic mass of draconian statutes inherited from a former, less civilized age. This overwhelmingly negative image underpinned the dramatic and unexpected repeal of the capital statutes in the 1830s and survived to define a whole era of criminal justice history. This article explores the conditions that enabled the reformers to establish such a powerful critique of the law in such a short space of time. It contends that a key to their success was their ability to exploit contemporary scandals to argue that the law had lost touch with public opinion. Forgery aroused more controversy than any other species of capital crime in the 1820s and became the focal point for opposition to the capital laws. By analysing how reformers used the scandal surrounding forgery to foster the notion that the law was a ‘bloody code’, this article presents a new perspective on the early nineteenth-century penal reform debate.

Judges v. Jurors: Courtroom Tensions in Murder Trials and the Law of Criminal Responsibility in Nineteenth-Century England

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin J. Wiener
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Important Change ◽  
Administrative Change ◽  
The Law ◽  
Murder Trials ◽  
Appeals Court ◽  
Justice Practice

Although it is well known that the criminal law's administration in nineteenth-century England altered decisively, little important change has been noted in the substantive criminal law. Yet change there was, but produced less through legislation (as was much administrative change) or even appeals court rulings than through everyday criminal justice practice. In particular, the effective meanings of legal terms central to the prosecution of homicide—terms such as provocation, intention, and insanity—were in motion during the nineteenth century as part of a broader redefining and reimagining of liability and responsibility. To grasp these often subtle shifts of meaning, we must look to the sites in which they occurred, the most important of which were the courtrooms of the assize courts, where the most serious offenses were tried.

scholarly journals Cetacean citations and the covenant of iron

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-185
Author(s):  
Jenny Bulstrode
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Herman Melville ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labour Rights

By the early decades of the nineteenth century, with surveys established as the weapon of choice for the fiscal military state, their instrumentation provided a focal point for radical attacks on political establishments. This paper considers a notorious dispute over mastery of iron in the instrumentation of magnetic surveying that took place in the 1830s between an Admiralty committee and the Reverend William Scoresby, a whaler-turned-clergyman. Scoresby staked his claim by drawing on the labour law of the whaleboats, a culture peculiarly preoccupied with the properties of bone and blubber, ink and skin, parchment and iron, where magnetism was forged in the ‘combinations’, as Scoresby put it, of such specific materials. The enterprises of his most avid reader, peer and fellow labour rights activist, Herman Melville, showcase the salience of Scoresby's struggle with Admiralty authority. The eminent Australian scholar Greg Dening's approach to ethnohistory proves the appropriate instrument with which to analyse such an encounter between traditions, negotiated through material forms. In the fraught exchange between whaler and maritime state, the combination laws that helped prompt the threat of revolution in early nineteenth-century Britain were translated into Scoresby's iron. Extant material and archival collections in Greenwich and Whitby offer traces of a battle between ways of knowing this protean metal: ‘not down in any map; true places never are’.

scholarly journals “Come brother Opie!”

2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-162
Author(s):  
Joe Bray
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Engagement ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Affective Dimension ◽  
Nineteenth Century Literature ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Century Literature ◽  
Amelia Opie

Joe Bray, “‘Come brother Opie!’: Amelia Opie and the Courtroom” (pp. 137–162) This essay examines how Amelia Opie’s lifelong fascination with the human drama of the courtroom is reflected in her fiction, specifically in her tales that revolve around trial scenes. Focusing on three examples in particular, “Henry Woodville” (1818), “The Robber” (1806), and “The Mysterious Stranger” (1813), it argues that Opie’s fictional courtrooms encourage an emotional engagement on the part of both characters and narrators, which in turn can be extended to that of the reader. In the case of “The Mysterious Stranger,” a character is on figurative trial throughout, with both narrator and reader frequently in the dark as to her motives. As a result, judgment is both hazardous and uncertain. Through a sympathetic representation of the passions and vicissitudes experienced by all those in the courtroom context, whether real or metaphorical, Opie’s fiction develops a model of readerly participation that adds a new, affective dimension to traditional accounts of the relationship between early-nineteenth-century literature and the law.

scholarly journals Legality Letter of Statement of Khilaf in Indonesia Criminal Justice System

FIAT JUSTISIA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 128
Author(s):  
Rugun Romaida Hutabarat
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Criminal Offense ◽  
Criminal Procedure Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Criminal Matters

In criminal law, a person charged with a criminal offense may be punished if it meets two matters, namely his act is unlawful, and the perpetrator of a crime may be liable for the indicated action (the offender's error) or the act may be dismissed to the perpetrator, and there is no excuse. The reasons may result in the death or the removal of the implied penalty. But it becomes a matter of how if the Letter of Statement Khilaf is the answer to solve the legal problems. The person who refuses or does not do what has been stated in the letters is often called "wanprestasi" because the statement is categorized as an agreement. The statement includes an agreement which is the domain of civil law or criminal law, so its application in the judicial system can be determined. This should be reviewed in the application of the law, are there any rules governing wrong statements in the criminal justice system. By using a declaration of khilaf as a way out of criminal matters, then the statement should be known in juridical rules. This study uses normative juridical methods, by conceptualizing the law as a norm rule which is a benchmark of human behavior, with emphasis on secondary data sources collected from the primary source of the legislation. The result of this research is that the statement of khilaf has legality, it is based on Jurisprudence No. 3901 K / Pdt / 1985 jo Article 189 Paragraph (1) of Indonesian criminal procedure law. However, this oversight letter needs to be verified in front of the court to be valid evidence, but this letter of error is not a deletion of a criminal offense, because the culpability of the defendant has justified the crime he committed. Such recognition, cannot make it free from the crime that has been committed.Keywords: Legality, Letter of Statement, Criminal Justice System

scholarly journals URGENSI DAN PENGATURAN UU TENTANG CONTEMPT OF COURT UNTUK MENJAMIN HARKAT, MARTABAT DAN WIBAWA PERADILAN

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aditya Wisnu Mulyadi
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Judicial Process ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Law ◽  
Good Attitude

The phenomenon of the Contempt of Court is an event that is rife in Indonesia lately. It is considered to reduce the dignity, majesty and authority of the judiciary and its apparatus. Particularly the dignity and authority of the judge. Attitudes and actions displayed by the search for justice, legal practitioners, the press, political and social organizations, NGOs, academics, judicial commission, as well as various other parties in such a way can be categorized injure the dignity, majesty and authority of the judiciary, good attitude and actions directed against the judicial process, judicial officials, as well as court decisions. Lack of strict legal instruments and adequate to serve as guidelines and benchmarks to judge such a phenomenon is made Contempt of Court always the case. View of the judge is an arm of God would have been contrary to Contempt of Court. The judge in charge of prosecuting and providing justice for justice seekers should not accept the bad treatments. This study is based on normative research method using statutory approach and conceptual approaches. Legislation that used is Law No. 4 of 1985 on the Supreme Court, Code of criminal law, the law book of the law of criminal procedure, the draft book of the Criminal Justice Act 2012 and draft the Code of Criminal Procedure 2012. This research is expected to contribute significantly for the creation benchmarks and appropriate guidelines in terms of the establishment of regulations and legislation on Contempt of Court Act

The Theory of Recognition in Fieri (1958)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Formative Stage ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
New States ◽  
The Law

The historian of international law attempting an inquiry into the law of recognition of States and governments during its formative stage, particularly into eighteenth-century sources, is bound to consult the first historical survey of the literature of the law of nations by D. H. L. Ompteda, published in 1785. Ompteda referred to problems of recognition under the general heading of the fundamental right of nations to freedom and independence. All the essays he mentioned as being directly or indirectly relevant to problems of recognition of new States or rulers were written by comparatively unknown authors. Among them, Justi and Steck were perhaps the most active participants in the first attempts to formulate a theory of recognition. This chapter considers these early attempts, in particular the direct influence of Justi and Steck on Martens and Klueber, and through them on Henry Wheaton and some of the early nineteenth-century writers.

A Research Evaluation of the Israeli New Pretrial Detention Act

2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 266-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hagit Lernau
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Research Evaluation ◽  
Law System ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
The Law

One of the most influential attempts to describe and comprehend the criminal law system is Packer's celebrated notion regarding the “Two Models of the Criminal Justice System.” Packer regards the criminal justice process as an image constantly shifting between two conflicting models — the “Crime Control Model” and the “Due Process Model” of criminal law. The first model strives to create an effective criminal system that will protect society's right to peace and safety. This aim may be achieved by emphasizing the earlier, informal stages in the law enforcement procedure, namely, police investigation and the decision to prosecute. The second model aims to ensure that the law enforcement process, which is one of the most coercive powers of the state, will be conducted in a lawful manner that will protect suspects and defendants from both intentional wrongdoing and from unintentional mistakes.

A Powerful Sympathy: Terror, the Prison, and Humanitarian Reform in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

1986 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall McGowen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The People ◽  
Difficult Time ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
Moral Taste

It is felt that men are henceforth to be held together by new ties, and separated by new barriere; for the ancient bonds will now no longer unite, nor the ancient boundaries confine. [J. S. Mill, “The Spirit of the Age” (1831)]I“The punishment of death shocks every mind to which it is vividly presented,” wrote Edward Gibbon Wakefield in 1832. It “overturns the most settled notions of right and wrong.” H. G. Bennet announced in Parliament in 1820 that he thought an execution “weakened the moral taste or sensibility of the people.” Such high-minded but platitudinous phrases frequently recurred in the early nineteenth-century debate over the criminal law, though historians have had a difficult time knowing what to make of them. Yet for all their vagueness such expressions do reveal a sensibility whose outline we can trace and whose influence we can measure. In drawing a connection between feeling and morality Wakefield appealed to social assumptions and values that were popular among humanitarians. Criminal law reformers proposed a new and exacting standard for the administration of justice: “Punishment,” argued James Scarlett, “ought to be consonant to the feelings and sympathies of mankind; and … those feelings ought to be enlisted on the side of the administration of justice.” They argued that the heavy reliance on the death penalty was a mistaken policy. The gallows aroused dangerous passions that signaled the existence of intractable social antagonism. They opposed such a spectacle with reforms that aimed at the promotion of a social union founded on shared feeling.

JAMES MACKINTOSH AND EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY CRIMINAL LAW

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 757-779 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIP HANDLER
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century

ABSTRACTThis article examines the criminal law reform career of James Mackintosh (1765–1832). As Recorder of Bombay (1804–11), writer and Whig MP (1813–32), Mackintosh engaged with diverse aspects of criminal law. His view of the organic relationship between law, society, and public opinion, which was shaped by his Scottish intellectual background and Foxite Whig politics, was distinct from the radical and liberal political perspectives most often associated with criminal law reform. The article traces the implications of Mackintosh's approach for the practice of politics and legislation in the period and suggests cause to revise assessments of its outcomes.

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