Other commentators have echoed the principle. īenjamin Franklin's version of Blackstone's ratio is very commonly quoted It was also absorbed into American common law, cited repeatedly by that country's Founding Fathers, later becoming a standard drilled into law students all the way into the 21st century. The phrase was absorbed by the British legal system, becoming a maxim by the early 19th century. Never to convict any person of murder or manslaughter till at least the body be found dead on account of two instances he mentions where persons were executed for the murder of others who were then alive but missing. Never to convict a man for stealing the goods of a person unknown, merely because he will give no account how he came by them, unless an actual felony be proved of such goods and, 2. And Sir Matthew Hale in particular lays down two rules most prudent and necessary to be observed: 1.
#Quaint notion meaning series#
The phrase, repeated widely and usually in isolation, comes from a longer passage, the fourth in a series of five discussions of policy by Blackstone:įourthly, all presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously, for the law holds that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
The message that government and the courts must err on the side of bringing in verdicts of innocence has remained constant.
There is also a long pre-history of similar sentiments going back centuries in a variety of legal traditions. The idea subsequently became a staple of legal thinking in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions and continues to be a topic of debate. Īs expressed by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s. It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. In criminal law, Blackstone's ratio (also known as Blackstone's formulation) is the idea that: Statue of William Blackstone located at Constitution Ave & 3rd St.
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