No Duty to Retreat

No Duty to Retreat takes as its starting-point the increased popularity in American society of the old English common-law concept that a person under physical attack has the right to stand his ground defend himself and even kill his assailant in self-defence in certain circumstances. This doctrine came to public awareness recently when Berhard Goetz took the law into his own hands when assaulted by four youths in a New York City subway train. There is a chapter on the American as gunfighter another on a famous vigilante case in California in the 1870s when farmers retaliated against the Southern Pacific Railroad trying to move them off their lands and a long chapter discussing `crime law and society in America since 1930'' in which Brown shows that the crime surge since the 1950s has occurred with the emergence of the Post-Industrial Society which has left many people alienated and looking for quick solutions.