lynch law

n.
The practice of lynching: "the injustices suffered by black citizens-disfranchisement, lynch law and mob rule" (Scot French).

[Probably after Charles Lynch (1736-1796), American militiaman and justice of the peace who held summary extralegal trials and whippings of supposed Tory sympathizers in Virginia during the American Revolution.]

Origin: 1780

If we Americans think "the courts are slow, uncertain, and unduly sympathetic with the rights of the accused," as one author wrote in 1905, what do we do about it? Nowadays we petition our legislators for stricter laws and our courts and police for stricter law enforcement. Until recently, however, our nation was notorious for quite a different solution to the problem, one that avoided the law entirely.

Lynch's law, lynch law, or just plain lynching, as it is now known, had its birth on the Virginia frontier in the 1780s during the American Revolution. It was named either after Captain William Lynch of Pittsylvania County or after Colonel Charles Lynch of Bedford County. It could well have been named for both, because both men independently organized their neighbors to defend their property against outlaws and disgruntled pro-British Tories. Both Lynch organizations not only captured suspicious characters but gave them fair trials and punished them if convicted. The punishment at Charles's court was usually thirty-nine lashes.

As the frontier moved westward over the course of the next century, lynch law moved with it. At first, lynching sometimes meant bringing together the citizens of a community to hear a case and mete out punishment, and the punishment was rarely capital. But in the later nineteenth century, lynching usually meant mob action and death by hanging or even burning. And it was not confined to the frontier; lynchings took place in every part of the country except New England. While members of all races were lynched, lynching was particularly hard on blacks in the South, who had little recourse to the law; some three thousand were lynched between 1880 and 1960. Only then, with the success of the civil rights movement, did the practice finally die out.

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The punishment of supposed criminals, especially by hanging, by agreement of a crowd and without a genuine criminal trial. Lynch law was used in the early settlement of the West as a way of maintaining minimal law and order before a sheriff and courts could be set up. It has also been used to deprive unpopular suspects of their rights and to satisfy a mob's thirst for vengeance. Lynch law was often used by whites in the South to terrorize and subjugate blacks.

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The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: the practice of punishing people by hanging without due process of law

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