Lynching is a term loosely applied to various forms of violence, usually murder, conceived by its perpetrators as extra-legal punishment of offenders by a summary procedure, ignoring, or even contrary to, the strict forms of law, notably execution, or used as a terrorist method of enforcing social domination. Victims of lynching have generally been members of groups marginalized or villified by society. The practice is age-old, e.g. stoning is believed to have started thus before lapidation was adopted as a judicial form of execution. Lynch law is frequently prevalent in sparsely settled or frontier districts, where government is weak and officers of the law too few and too powerless to enforce law and preserve order. The practice has been common in periods of threatened anarchy. In early twentieth century it was also found significantly in Russia and south-eastern Europe, but essentially and almost peculiarly in America.

Lynch law is sometimes justified by its supporters as the administration of justice (in a social-moral sense, not in law) without the delays and inefficencies inherent to the legal system; in this way it echoes the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, which was justified by the claim "Terror is nothing more than Justice, swift and certain."

Word history

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The word "lynching" is recorded in English since 1835, as a verb derived from the earlier expression Lynch law (known since 1811), which clearly seems named after the Lynch family, whose surname derives either from Old English hlinc "hill" or from Irish Loingseach "sailor", though which member remains disputed. The most likely eponym for the concept of Lynch law as summary justice is William Lynch, the author of "Lynch's Law", an agreement with the Virginia Legislature on September 22, 1782, which allowed Lynch to pursue and punish criminals in Pittsylvania County, without due process of law, because legal proceedings were in practical terms impossible in the area due to the lack of adequate provision of courts. Others believe the term came into use only with Colonel Charles Lynch, a Virginia magistrate and officer on the revolutionary side during the American Revolutionary War, who in any case continued William's practice, as the head of a vigilance committee, an irregular court, trying and sentencing to fining and imprisoning petty criminals and pro- British 'Tories' in his district circa 1782. In these cases only minor punishments were used, mostly corporal punishment, especially flogging. Neither William Lynch nor Charles Lynch ever executed anyone.

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