Angela Ellisjones

Hardly a week goes by without the news that some criminal has pocketed an enormous sum from suing someone in an action which arises from the criminal’s wrongdoing. The government has sought to clamp down on this practice by inserting into the Criminal Justice Bill a clause that will prevent criminals from suing their victims for injuries they have incurred in the course of their crimes. This is a belated move in the right direction. But how did judges ever come to entertain such actions? How did all the traditional canons of the criminal law come to be inverted in favour of the wrongdoer? The pathological stage of a current of ideas started not in the 1960s, but as long ago as the 1880s. In many ways the 1880s was a pivotal decade that contained the seeds of the modern age.