Lynch Law

a term used in the United States to characterize justice administered without due process of law. The origin of the term is quite uncertain. It was applied at first to the orderly action of communities taking justice into their own hands. In the early days of San Francisco, for instance, the settlers organized in an orderly manner and hanged a large number of desperadoes and gamblers who had terrorized the town. Such proceedings were called sessions of the court of "Judge Lynch." Latterly, however, lynching has come to mean the more or less disorderly whipping or execution of persons suspected of crime. The Ku Klux Klan of the South was accused of frequent lynchings. In 1902, deplorable as it may seem, there were 241 lynchings in the United States, 162 of the persons lynched being negroes.