England and Great Britain
Ironically, the first attempt to constrain the development of constructive treasons in England was the 1351 Act itself. Its preamble states that Parliament had decided to define treason by statute for the first time because the common law definition had expanded so widely (however this had not been constructive treason, since until 1351 treason had always been defined by judges, not by legislation). The Act ended with a clause which prohibited further judicial development of the offence:
| “ | And because that many other like Cases of Treason may happen in Time to come, which a Man cannot think nor declare at this present Time; it is accorded, That if any other Case, supposed Treason, which is not above specified, doth happen before any Justices, the Justices shall tarry without any going to Judgement of the Treason till the Cause be shewed and declared before the King and his Parliament, whether it ought to be judged Treason or other Felony. | ” |
As noted above, this was not entirely successful. From the seventeenth century, English courts refined and extended the law of treason, tolerated by Parliament, which sometimes even enshrined these new constructive treasons in new statutes — imprisoning the king became written into the Treason Acts of 1661 and 1795. By the nineteenth century, however, Parliament had established itself as the main source of new crimes, as the volume of legislation increased, and the ancient common law tradition of judges creating new crimes fell into disuse.
Read more about this topic: Constructive Treason
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