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Outlaw was also a British hip hop group. Outlaw was also the name of the fifth studio album by British band Alabama 3. The Outlaw is also the name of a roller coaster at Adventureland in Iowa. For other uses, see Outlaws.

An outlaw, a person living the lifestyle of outlawry, meaning literally "outside of the law." In the common law of England, a judgment declaring someone an outlaw was one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. However, romanticised outlaws became stock characters in several fictional settings, particularly in Western movies.

A feature of older legal systems

In British common law, an outlaw was a person who had defied the laws of the realm, by such acts as ignoring a summons to court, or fleeing instead of appearing to plead when charged with a crime. In the earlier law of Anglo-Saxon England, outlawry was also declared when a person committed a homicide and could not pay the weregild, the blood-money, due to the victim's kin. Outlawry also existed in other legal codes of the time, such as the ancient Norse and Icelandic legal code.

To be declared an outlaw was to suffer a form of civil death. The outlaw was debarred from all civilised society. No one was allowed to give him food, shelter, or any other sort of support — to do so was to commit the crime of couthutlaugh (or aiding and abetting), and to be in danger of the ban oneself. An outlaw might be killed with impunity; and it was not only lawful but meritorious to kill a thief flying from justice — to do so was not murder. A man who slew a thief was expected to declare the fact without delay, otherwise the dead man’s kindred might clear his name by their oath and require the slayer to pay wergild as for a true man (F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I (1895, 2nd. ed., Cambridge, 1898, reprinted 1968)). Because the outlaw has defied civil society, that society was quit of any obligations to the outlaw —outlaws had no civil rights, could not sue in any court on any cause of action, though they were themselves personally liable.

In the context of criminal law, outlawry faded not so much by legal changes as by the greater population density of the country, which made it harder for wanted fugitives to evade capture; and by the international adoption of extradition pacts. In the civil context, outlawry became obsolescent in civil procedure by reforms that no longer required summoned defendants to appear and plead. Still, the possibility of being declared an outlaw for derelictions of civil duty continued to exist in English law until 1879 and in Scots law until the late 1940s. Prior to the Nuremberg Trials, the British jurist Lord Chancellor John Allsebrook Simon attempted to resurrect the concept of outlawry in order to provide for summary executions of captured Nazi war criminals. Although Simon's point of view was supported by Winston Churchill, American and Soviet attorneys insisted on a trial, and he was thus overruled.

Famous outlaws

The stereotype owes a great deal to English folklore precedents, in the tales of Robin Hood and of gallant highwaymen. But outlawry was once a term of art in the law, and one of the harshest judgments that could be pronounced on anyone's head.

The outlaw is familiar to contemporary readers as an archetype in Western movies, depicting the lawless expansionism period of the United States in the late 19th century. The Western outlaw is typically a criminal who operates from a base in the wilderness, and opposes, attacks or disrupts the fragile institutions of new settlements.

American Western outlaws

Depression-era "Public Enemy" outlaws

Norse peoples

Asian

Medieval

Bandits

Australian bushrangers

Fugitives: Contemporary Outlaws

Others

The Outlaw (movie)

The Outlaw is a 1943 Western movie about Billy the Kid that marked the début of Jane Russell; it was directed by Howard Hughes. The film also starred Walter Huston as Doc Holliday.

The film is remembered mostly because Hughes invented the push-up brassière for his new star Jane Russell to wear. The attention paid to her cleavage meant that the film had a running battle with censors in several states, as well as with the Hays Office.

References

Legal history | Criminal law | Stock characters | Outlaws

Gesetzloser | Vogelvrij | Eksterleĝulo | アウトロー | Fredlös

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Outlaw".

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