Deodand
The English common-law rule by which a chattel that caused a human death was forfeited to the Crown as a 'guilty' object, regardless of the owner's innocence. The deodand itself never crossed into American law, but the in rem fiction it rests on — that a thing can be the offender — is the acknowledged taproot of modern civil forfeiture. Names the historical source of the 'guilty property' personification that the Supreme Court still traces by name.
May 31, 2026