Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

blood feud.

A state of hostility between families in which one family seeks to avenge the killing of one of its members by killing a member of the other family. "Anglo-Saxon polity preserved, even down to the Norman Conquest, many traces of a time when kinship was the strongest of all bonds. Such a stage of society, we hardly need add, is not confined to any one region of the world or any one race of men .... When it puts on the face of strife between hostile kindreds, it is shown in the war of tribal factions, and more specifically in the bloodfeud. A man's kindred are his avengers; and, as it is their right and honour to avenge him, so it is their duty to make amends for his misdeeds, or else maintain his cause in fight. Step by step, as the power of the State waxes, the self-centred and self-helping autonomy of the kindred wanes. Private feud is controlled, regulated, put, one may say, into legal harness; the avenging and the protecting clan on the slain and the slayer are made pledges and auxiliaries of public justice." 1 Frederick Pollock & Frederic W. Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward 1 31 (2d ed. 1898).