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75 Mich. 488

Ware v. Loveridge

Michigan Supreme Court

Decided April 16, 1889

Michigan Supreme Court · decided 1889-04-16

<p>Criminal law — Breach of the peace — XJse of insulting language in dwelling-house, in presence of occupants — Mandamus.</p> <p>1. The use of foul, abusive, and insulting language in a dwelling-house, in the presence of the occupants, unaccompanied by threats, and causing no expectation or fear of personal violence, is not a breach of the peace within the common-law definition of that term.</p> <p>2. Mandamus will not lie to compel a circuit judge to try an information for an alleged “ breach of the peace,” charged to have been committed by the use of foul, abusive, and insulting language in a dwelling-house, in the presence of the occupants, but accompanied with no threat, and causing no expectation or fear of personal violence.</p> <p>8, The following propositions are summarized from the opinion of Mr. Justice Campbell:</p> <p>a — No principle is more universally settled than that which deprives all courts of power to infer, from their judicial ideas of policy, crimes not defined by statute or by common-law precedents.</p> <p>b — Nothing can be a crime until it has been recognized as such by the law of the land.</p> <p>e — It is a fixed rule that an act must he left to civil remedies, unless it has been recognized as so dangerous to the public as to need repression or punishment as a wrong to the body politic.</p> <p>d — One of the primary objects of the creation of the offices of conservators and justices of the peace was to prevent breaches of the peace, by putting persons under bonds for keeping the peace, or for their good behavior, which includes breaches of the peace, and more.</p> <p>e — It has always been held, and very wisely, that personal injuries purposely inflicted have a direct tendency to disturb the public tranquillity; but there are very few cases where what is essentially a private, and not a public, grievance has been adopted into the list of crimes.</p> <p>4, Mrs Justice Long, in a concurring opinion, concurred in by Champlin and Morse, JJ., says: “It is true that indictments will not lie for private wrongs not directly affecting the public: but, where the conduct and language of the individual is such that its natural and necessary tendency is to incite others to open violence, a,nd provoke assaults, such conduct and language ought to constitute a public offense,” for which some mode of punishment should be provided by the Legislature.</p> <p>5. Chief Justice Sherwood, in a dissenting opinion, says: “ I can never consent to the doctrine that the public peace, which the law secures to the citizen of this State, does not include and secure the tranquillity of the home against invasion by the lawless and violent; and it should be held that, among the most important duties courts and conservators of the peace have to perform is to be vigilant in protecting the quiet and sanctity of the home.”</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1889-04-16

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2015

11 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Sherwood, C. J.

¶1(dissenting). I must entirely dissent in this case from the conclusion reached by my' brethren in their opinions filed, and from the reasoning by which they justify it.

¶2I can never consent to the doctrine that the public peace, which the law secures to the citizen of this State, does not include and secure the tranquillity of the home against invasion by the lawless and violent; and it should be held that, among the most important duties courts and conservators of the peace have to perform, is to be vigilant in protecting the quiet and sanctity of the home; and, when the administration of the law fails to do this, it ceases to become useful in any community; and, where its means to furnish such protection are limited to a civil action against the marauder and desperado, it fails, notonly to accomplish the object intended, but is unworthy of the respect of all classes of our people.

¶3It is substantially conceded that, if the violator of the rights of the injured family in this case had committed the same offense upon the public streets, he would have been guilty of a great outrage of the public peace. I think it must be regarded as a strange doctrine indeed that such action should be held less atrocious because committed by entering the home of this family, two rods distant, where the consequences were of a far more serious character.

¶4I think the action taken by the prosecuting attorney was right; that he should be commended for his vigilance; and the mandamus should be granted.