Distrust of Legal Institutions

Abstract

A lack of confidence in English law courts first arose in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in response to the corruption of justice in outlying regions of the country. Reforms undertaken by the governments of Henry VII and Henry VIII helped to restore trust in the legal process, but distrust arose once again during the personal rule of Charles I and among law reformers in the 1640s and 1650s. Distrust of English law courts reached a peak in the late seventeenth century in reaction to the coercion of juries and the violation of defendants’ rights in trials of Whigs and religious dissenters. Other sources of judicial distrust in late seventeenth-century England and the early American republic were the procedures in treason trials, which resulted in the unfair prosecution of opponents of the government. The harshness and unfairness of punishments for all crimes also eroded faith in the entire criminal justice system in both Britain and America during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.