Blackstone's ratio
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
(Redirected from Blackstone's formulation)
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
In criminal law, Blackstone's formulation (also known as Blackstone's ratio or the Blackstone ratio) is the principle that "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer", as expressed by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work, Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s.
Historically, the details of the ratio have varied, but the message that government and the courts must err on the side of innocence has remained constant.
[edit]
In popular culture
Horace Rumpole, the protagonist barrister of Rumpole of the Bailey, is fond of paraphrasing Blackstone's formulation, albeit without attribution.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Blackstone's ratio" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
