Abstract

I take it that the chief purpose of Professor Seipp's Paper' is to establish two propositions about the history of the tort/crime distinction: that the distinction goes back very far in English law, and that the distinction is based on whether the principal consequence of conviction was compensation of the victim or punishment of the offender. To me, however, the Paper is interesting for two other reasons: the similarities, in function more than form, between English law enforcement in the Middle Ages and in the eighteenth century, and the implications of both for the tort/ crime distinction.