The Principle of Punishment in Classical English Law

Much of the nineteenth century is well-known to have been a period in which fundamental principles of English private law first came to be subjected to scientific treatment. Such was the significance of this period that it was assigned the epithet ‘classical’. Among the principles to have first been subjected to such treatment were those specifically concerned with the recovery of civil damages in actions at common law. This article systematically traces the process by which modern private law’s most controversial civil recovery principle – that of punishment in tort – came to be treated scientifically during this classical period. In doing so, it sheds new light on how a substantive common ‘law’ of punitive damages first actually arose.