Did the presumption of innocence exist in summary proceedings?

Law and History Review

Volumn 23, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 191-199

  Smith, Bruce P ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60950605900     PISSN: 07382480     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0738248000000092     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. See Norma Landau, "Summary Conviction and the Development of the Penal Law," Law and History Review 23 (2005): 173-189.
2. For a recent expression of my admiration for Landau's "ambitious reconstruction of the murky world of the London-area 'trading justices,'" see Bruce P. Smith, review of Law, Crime and English Society, 1660-1830, ed. Norma Landau, Law and History Review 22 (2004): 649.
3. See Bruce P. Smith, "The Presumption of Guilt and the English Law of Theft, 1750-1850," Law and History Review 23 (2005): 134, 135.
4. Landau, "Summary Conviction," 174, 188.
5. See Smith, "Presumption of Guilt," 154 and n. 69
6. (citing Norma Landau, The Justices of the Peace, 1679-1760 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984], 246).
7. Landau, "Summary Conviction," 176.
8. Smith, "Presumption of Guilt," 156-57 (internal citations removed).
9. In 1766, for example, Parliament passed both the Wood Act (6 Geo. III, c. 48 [1766])
10. Sir Leon Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750, vol. 1, The Movement for Reform 1750-1833 (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 484-85.
11. (citing the Theft Act, 4 Geo. II, c. 32 [1731]
12. and the Criminal Law Act, 21 Geo. III, c. 68 [1781]).
13. 29 Geo. II, c. 30, § 1 (1756).
14. See also Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (7th ed. 1806; reprint ed. [Montclair, N. J. : Patterson Smith, 1969]), 195.
15. J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England 1660-1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986) 190 n. 101 (1986)
16. (citing 7 & 8 Geo. IV, c. 29 [1827]).
17. See David Eastwood, Governing Rural England: Tradition and Transformation in Local Government 1780-1840 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 94-95 (relying, in part, on Sidney and Beatrice Webb's The Manor and the Borough (1908) in noting that "the judicial and administrative system elaborated by justices [of the peace] . . . effectively displaced manorial courts and other minor jurisdictions," which gradually "lost real power").
18. For a description of the varied responsibilities of the Trinity House Corporation, see Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames (1800; reprint ed. [Montclair, N. J. : Patterson Smith, 1969]), 336-61.
19. Traill Report, 218 (emphasis added).
20. In 1837, by way of example, there were 7,639 summary committals to the house of correction at Coldbath Fields and 1,060 committals for jury trial. See Bruce P. Smith, "Circumventing the Jury: Petty Crime and Summary Jurisdiction in London and New York City, 1790-1855" (Ph. D. diss. , Yale University, 1996), 415
21. (citing Justice of the Peace [Nov. 17, 1838]).
22. Of course, we might question whether merely tallying prosecutions provides a complete account of the impact of the criminal law on the lives of citizens. Even laws that are not enforced can profoundly affect the ways that persons structure their lives. On this theme, see Ryan Goodman, "Beyond the Enforcement Principle: Sodomy Laws, Social Norms, and Social Panoptics," California Law Review 89 (2001): 643-740 (demonstrating how even anti-sodomy statutes that are not enforced can affect individual identity and social relations).
23. (citing Colquhoun, Treatise (River Thames), 43)
24. with Norma Landau, "The Trading Justice's Trade," in Law, Crime and English Society, 66 (noting that, from October 1773 to December 1786, only 1,375 convictions were reported - "a suspiciously low average of just 26 convictions every three months").
25. 184 ("draconian").