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Ordering Principles: The Adjudication of Criminal Cases in Puritan Massachusetts, 1629-1650
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Abstract
In this article I review court records from the early period of settlement in Puritan Massachusetts (1629–50). The study avoids the great controversies of the day, focusing instead on the patterns that appear in the adjudication of a great number of cases over time. In the first part of the study, a quantitative analysis is performed on a data set comprising crimes (the independent variable) and punishments, evaluated according to an ordinally ranked scale of severity. In the second part, I review the records in detail and suggest conclusions concerning the purposes of punishment and the organizing concepts that are shown to have governed the adjudication of cases in the early Massachusetts courts. The study finds that over a period of decades and a large number of cases (N=793), the actions perceived to be necessary for the restoration of communal order dictated the severity of punishment imposed. I argue that this pattern demonstrates impressive fidelity to the doctrinal principles that served as the public legitimating principles for these courts. These findings, in turn, encourage us to question accounts that purport to show that these principles were merely veils for religious, economic, or social aggrandizement, particularly when such accounts are based on interpretations of individual cases or events.
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- Copyright © 1998 by the Law and Society Association
Footnotes
I wish to thank Edward Cook, Richard Ross, and Walter Mebane for their help and guidance in the preparation of this article. A paper on which this article is based was presented at the annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Political Science Association in October 1995. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for Law & Society Review, who reviewed earlier drafts and helped me avoid a variety of errors. Those errors that remain are, of course, my own responsibility.
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