After slavery was abolished, southern vigilante groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, sought to continue white dominance over freed blacks by using Lynching and other forms of intimidation that were prohibited by law. As part of the resistance, they threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.ĭuring the 1830s, so-called "vigilance committees" formed in the South to protect the institution of Slavery against encroachment by abolitionists, who were routinely assaulted, tarred and feathered, and otherwise terrorized by these committees with the Acquiescence of local law enforcement personnel. On December 16, 1773, American colonists, tired of British direct taxation, took part in what came to be known as the Boston Tea Party. In many ways, the history of the United States began with vigilantism. The history of vigilantism in the United States is as old as the country itself.
By taking law into their own hands, vigilantes flout the rule of law, effectively becoming lawmaker, police officer, judge, jury, and appellate court for the cause they are pursuing. Citizens are often limited to making arrests for felonies committed in their presence. Private individuals may also make "citizen arrests," but the circumstances in which the law authorizes them to do so are very narrow. Private citizens may use force and violence to defend their lives and their property, and in some instances the lives and property of others, but they must do so under the specific circumstances allowed by the law if they wish to avoid being prosecuted for a crime themselves.
State and federal governments are given what amounts to a Monopoly over the use of force and violence to implement the law. In other words, police officers, judges, and juries should act according to the law and not according to their personal preferences or private agendas. Even when the human element factors into legal decision making, the decision maker is expected to be constrained by the law in making his or her decision. Under the rule of law, laws are thought to exist independent of, and separate from, human will. The foundation of the American legal system rests on the Rule of Law, a concept embodied in the notion that the United States is a nation of laws and not of men. Taking the law into one's own hands and attempting to effect justice according to one's own understanding of right and wrong action taken by a voluntary association of persons who organize themselves for the purpose of protecting a common interest, such as liberty, property, or personal security action taken by an individual or group to protest existing law action taken by an individual or group to enforce a higher law than that enacted by society's designated lawmaking institutions private enforcement of legal norms in the absence of an established, reliable, and effective law enforcement body.
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