Editing Murder (section)

===Common law===
According to Blackstone, English [[common law]] identified murder as a ''public wrong''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/blackstone/bk4ch14.htm |title=Blackstone, Book 4, Chapter 14 |publisher=Yale.edu |access-date=2010-06-25 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101203082805/http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/blackstone/bk4ch14.htm |archive-date=2010-12-03 }}</ref> According to common law, murder is considered to be ''[[malum in se]]'', that is, an act which is evil within itself. An act such as murder is wrong or evil by its very nature, and it is the very nature of the act which does not require any specific detailing or definition in the law to consider murder a crime.<ref>A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage By Bryan A. Garner, p. 545.</ref>

Some jurisdictions still take a common law view of murder. In such jurisdictions, what is considered to be murder is defined by [[precedent]] case law or previous decisions of the courts of law. However, although the common law is by nature flexible and adaptable, in the interests both of certainty and of securing convictions, most common law jurisdictions have [[Codification (law)|codified]] their criminal law and now have statutory definitions of murder.