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THE GREEN BAG

LYNCH-LAW AND LYNCHING ' BY DUANE MOWRY MR. JUSTICE BREWER,2 of the Su fact remains that lynching is a criminal preme Court of the United States, is practice which is peculiar to the United reported to have recently said that lynch- States. " Ample statistics, data, and reports, law is now a habit of the American people. from court proceedings, newspapers, and And he very justly denominates it "a most other sources, are introduced by the author, terrible blot on our national life. " He adds : not, perhaps, entirely reliable, but nearly •"It used to be said that it was one of the so, which go far to sustain the indictment by worst evidences of the lawlessness that pre Justice Brewer. It is believed that the vailed in our frontier life. I have seen it claim that lynching has become an Ameri operate in such communities, a society where can "habit" is fully warranted bv the the machinery of the law was not yet in facts. Mr. Cutler's discussion of the origin and full operation. But now, alas, scarcely a growth of lynch-law in this country is very day passes that we do not learn that 'the full and shows that in its inception lynchpeople have taken the law into their own law, which is denned as the popular admin hands,' as the remark is, somewhere in this istration of justice without the forms of country." law, did not contemplate the execution of In a government, whose subjects pride its victims; that the taking of human life themselves upon their law-abiding pro has been a practice of a comparatively clivities and respect for law, this arraign recent date, since the Civil War. So that ment, coming from such eminent authority, to-day "a lynching maybe denned to be an becomes a most important and serious illegal and summary execution at the hands matter, if true. And is it true? of a mob, or a number of persons, who have Dr. J. E. Cutler, in his investigation into in some degree the public opinion of the the history of lynching in the United States, community behind them." In the earlier who has recently submitted the most com prehensive treatise extant on the subject of days of its administration, lynch-law meant lynchings and lynch-law in this country, some sort of corporal punishment, usually does not hesitate most positively to say that whipping, or, possibly, banishment from the '"the practice whereby mobs capture in community. How far it has degenerated dividuals suspected of crime, or take them it is not difficult to determine from the from the officers of the law, and execute examination of the initial chapters of this them without any process at law, or break interesting book. In considering the causes for the prev open jails and hang convicted criminals alence of lynch-law in this country, Dr. with immunity, is to be found in no other country of a high degree of civilization." Cutler doubtless states the true one. He And he asserts that "we may be reluctant does not believe that it lies along racial to admit our peculiarity in this respect and lines, or is due, primarily, to race prejudice. it may seem unpatriotic to do so, but the He says, as we think, truly: "The Ameri can people are not any more disposed 1 Lynch-law. An Investigation into the His toward lawlessness — they are not less lawtory of Lynching in the United States. By James Elbcrt Cutler, Ph.D. New York : Longmans, abiding — than .European peoples; it is rather that they maintain a wholly differ Green & Company. 2 In a Public Address before the Yale Law ent attitude toward the law. Social and political conditions are different, and the School.