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An outlaw, a person living the lifestyle of outlawry, is most familiar to contemporary
readers as a stock character in Western movies. The Western outlaw is typically a criminal who
operates from a base in the wilderness, and makes periodic raids on civilized
settlements. The stereotype owes a great deal to English folklore precedents, in the tales of Robin Hood and of gallant highwaymen.
But outlawry was once a term of art in the law, and one of the harshest judgments that could be pronounced on
anyone's head.
In common law, an outlaw was a person who had defied the laws of the realm,
by such acts as ignoring a summons to court, or fleeing instead of appearing to plead
when charged with a crime. In the earlier law of Anglo-Saxon England, outlawry was also declared when a person committed a homicide and could not pay the were, the blood-money, due to the victim's kin.
To be declared an outlaw was to suffer a form of civil death. The outlaw
was debarred from all civilised society. No one was allowed to give him food, shelter, or any other sort of support; to do so was
to commit the crime of couthutlaugh, and to be in danger of the ban oneself. A person who encountered an outlaw was
allowed, and indeed encouraged, to kill them; to do so was no murder. Because the
outlaw has defied civil society, that society was quit of any obligations to the outlaw; outlaws had no civil rights, could not
sue in any court on any cause of action, though they were themselves personally liable.
In the context of criminal law, outlawry faded not so much by legal
changes as by the greater population density of the country, which made it harder for wanted fugitives to evade capture; and by
the international adoption of extradition pacts. In the civil context,
outlawry became obsolescent in civil procedure by reforms that no
longer required summoned defendants to appear and plead. Still, the possibility
of being declared an outlaw for derelictions of civil duty continued to exist in
English law until 1879.
Famous Outlaws
The Outlaw is a 1943 Western movie about Billy the Kid that marked the
début of Jane Russell; it was directed by Howard Hughes. The film also starred Walter
Huston as Doc Holliday.
The film is remembered mostly because Hughes invented the push-up brassière
for his new star Jane Russell to wear. The attention paid to her cleavage meant that
the film had a running battle with censors in several states, as well as with
the Hays Office.
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