PREFACE xvii
penal sanctions. Thus in some African tribes we find a regular practice of imprecation against wrongdoers. A person who has committed an offence, whether it is or is not known who he is, may be officially cursed by the elders or by persons having authority and power to act in this way. The curse is normally accompanied by some ritual or magical act through which it is effective. It is believed that the guilty person will fall sick and die unless the curse is removed.1 Again, in many African societies a person who is accused or suspected of witchcraft or some other offence may be compelled to take an oath or submit to an ordeal, the belief being that if he is guilty he will fall sick and die.
Thus the rudiments of what in the more complex societies is the organized institution of criminal justice are to be found in these recognized procedures by which action is taken by or on behalf of the body of members of the community, either directly or by appeal to ritual or supernatural means, to inflict punishment on an offender or to exclude him from the community. In African societies the decision to apply a penal sanction may rest with the people in general, with the elders, as in a gerontocracy, with a limited number of judges or leaders, or with a single chief or king.
There is another side of law, in which" we are concerned with conflicts between persons or-groups, or with injuries inflicted by one person or group upon another, and with action by or on behalf of the community to resolve the conflict or to secure that satisfaction is given for the injury. In this field of law also we find a minimum of organization in some of the simpler societies; the effective force which controls or limits conflict, or which compels the wrong doer to give satisfaction to the person he has injured, is simply public opinion or, as it may perhaps better be called, public sentiment. A person who has suffered wrong or injury at the hand of another and cannot in any other way obtain satisfaction may take forcible action. If public sentiment is on his side, the conflict may be resolved in a way that is regarded as just, and so satisfies the community. There is often some conventionally recognized form of procedure by which an injured person may seek to get public sentiment on his side. Knowledge that such action of self-redress is possible is itself often sufficient to restrain those who might otherwise commit injurious acts or to induce them to
1 For an example, see Peristiany, Social Institutions of the Kipsigis, pp. 87-8 188,192.