ABSTRACT
In early English law today’s distinction between crime of criminal law and tort of civil law did not exist. Historians of criminal law concluded that criminal law evolved from the desire for revenge of the blood feud (Sayre 1931-1932). In the era of trial by battle and ordeal, early laws to emerge were based on strict liability, and criminal intent was not an element of a criminal oense prior to the twelh century (Sayre 1931-1932). Neither was the distinction between felonies and misdemeanors what it is today. Prior to Bracton in the twelh century, minor oenses were punishable by corporal punishment or amercement, and the distinction between civil and criminal aspects of trespass, between the misdemeanors and torts of today, was obscure (Sayre 1931-1932).
