This paper compares William Blackstone's eighteenth-century categorizations of homicide in his Commentaries on the Laws of England with the homicide provisions of the Washington Criminal Code. The paper examines how Blackstone divided homicide into justifiable, excusable, and felonious categories — and how the Washington Criminal Code mirrors this tripartite structure while imposing more precisely codified standards for each offense level. The analysis highlights both the enduring influence of British common law on American criminal law and the ways in which state statutory codes have refined and narrowed Blackstone's broader, more interpretively open framework.
The American legal system derives almost entirely from the British common law system. That is why, in America, if there is no precedent for a particular set of facts at trial, the court will look to common law from centuries before America even existed as a nation.
The similarities are even more noticeable in criminal law than they are in civil law. The homicide passages in Blackstone's descriptions of the law, for instance, are strikingly similar in many ways to the homicide provisions in the Washington Criminal Code.
Blackstone divides homicide into three separate branches: justifiable homicide, excusable homicide, and felonious homicide. All three involve "the killing of any human creature," but there are significant differences between the three, according to Blackstone (Blackstone, 71).
Justifiable homicide can arise from necessity — a public official putting a felon to death as prescribed by the law, for instance, is one of Blackstone's examples — or from a homicide committed in the advancement of public justice (such as stopping a more dangerous crime), or in the defense of chastity, or in defense of one's relations (Blackstone, 72). Justifiable homicide means that the person committing the homicide should face no liability whatsoever for his or her actions. As the word implies, the act was entirely justified by the surrounding circumstances.
Excusable homicide, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter for Blackstone. For instance, if a man kills someone by accident and his actions were "moderate," he may not be culpable at all, or his crime might be more appropriately labeled manslaughter (Blackstone, 73). However, if he exceeds the "bounds of moderation," he is still culpable. A generally excusable action is only excusable for Blackstone if certain qualifications are met by the actor (Blackstone, 73).
Self-defense homicide is also categorized as excusable rather than justifiable, according to Blackstone (Blackstone, 74). Blackstone differentiates self-defense from homicide committed in order to prevent a public crime or an assault (Blackstone, 74).
Lastly, Blackstone addresses felonious homicide. He divides it into murder and manslaughter, with manslaughter carrying both voluntary and involuntary categorizations (Blackstone, 78). Manslaughter, for Blackstone, does not involve malice — whereas murder does. Murder is generally premeditated and carries a much stiffer legal penalty and punishment.
"Washington Code's statutory homicide definitions"
"Similarities and divergences between the two frameworks"
The upshot of this is that American states' legal systems are based strongly on the British common law system, but only in their overarching structures. The actual details of what constitutes a crime — the elements of crimes — are codified specifically in state criminal statutes. The advantage of this arrangement is a fuller, more complete criminal legal system, in which certain portions are left to case law interpretation while the remainder consists of actual black-letter law.
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