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Criminal Law - Theft & Fraud Notes

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Extract from the 3rd Edition of Lacey, Wells and Quick, Reconstructing Criminal Law (CUP 2003) Chapter 4 II.a.i. The History of Theft William Blackstone’s Commentaries, written in the middle of the eighteenth century, represent one of the first systematic expositions of the common law. His volume on criminal offences included a substantial section on ‘offences against private property’: William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 1765 Vol. IV p.230 'Simple larciny then is the 'felonious taking, and carrying away, of the personal goods of another'. This offence certainly commenced then, whenever it was, that the bounds of property, or laws of meum and tuum, were established. How far such an offence can exist in a …show more content…

Whilst the accounts provided by writers such as Quinney and Hall (see below) represent these changes as driven by social and economic factors, Fletcher's explanation is rooted in the logic of legal forms themselves. Fletcher rejects both the idea that the development of theft is a question of historical accident and the idea that it is a matter of historical determinism - primarily a product of social and economic conditions. These factors certainly have a place in his story, but his account shows how those broader influences are filtered through a set of legal forms which have their own internal logic. To explore these competing legal and social explanations, and their implications for the modern criminal law, it is worth examining the law of larceny in a little more detail. In Blackstone's time, as we have seen, the essence of larceny was a taking. In other words, the consent of the owner had to be wanting; and there had to be a taking from possession - someone legally in possession could thus not be a thief. This meant that uncertainties in the law of possession, and in particular about the line between possession and mere use or custody, were of central importance in the law of larceny. For example, was a domestic servant in possession

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