Comparative Lynch Law: Lynch Trials and Vigilantism

Abstract

Jim Whitman does serious comparative law, writing about new and profound questions. I cannot begin to match that, but offer this small contribution on the relationship between lynch trials and vigilantism on the American frontier. Any area on the frontier that is to say, Western areas not yet included in a Territory or State lacked a legal system and, in particular, the infrastructure for trying and punishing criminals. The frontier had no government, laws, courts, jails, or sheriffs; but there were crimes in even the smallest communities, as John Philip Ried showed in his books about criminal law on the overland trail. When a member of a wagon train killed one of his fellows, Reid found, the wagons stopped and their owners held an Anglo-American style jury trial, asking members of other wagon trains to serve as jurors.