Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-915_8o6b.pdf
Page Number: 15.0

Cite as:  602 U. S. ____ (2024) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

Rev. Stat., ch. 134, §6 (1836).  If the individual did post a
bond and then broke the peace, the bond would be forfeit.  4 
Blackstone 253. 

Well  entrenched  in  the  common  law,  the  surety  laws
could be invoked to prevent all forms of violence, including 
spousal  abuse.    As  Blackstone  explained,  “[w]ives  [could]
demand [sureties] against their husbands; or husbands, if 
necessary,  against  their  wives.”  Id.,  at  254.  These  often 
took the form of a surety of the peace, meaning that the de-
fendant pledged to “keep the peace.”  Id., at 252–253; see R. 
Bloch,  The  American  Revolution,  Wife  Beating,  and  the 
Emergent Value of Privacy, 5 Early American Studies 223,
232–233, 234–235 (2007) (Bloch) (discussing peace bonds).
Wives also demanded sureties for good behavior, whereby a 
husband pledged to “demean and behave himself well.”  4 
Blackstone 253; see Bloch 232–233, 234–235, and n. 34. 

While  communities  sometimes  resorted  to  public  sham-
ing  or  vigilante  justice  to  chastise  abusers,  sureties  pro-
vided  the  public  with  a  more  measured  solution.  B. 
McConville, The Rise of Rough Music, in Riot and Revelry 
in Early America 90–100 (W. Pencak, M. Dennis, & S. New-
man eds. 2002).  In one widely reported incident, Susannah
Wyllys  Strong,  the  wife  of  a  Connecticut  judge,  appeared 
before Tapping Reeve in 1790 to make a complaint against
her husband.  K. Ryan, “The Spirit of Contradiction”: Wife
Abuse  in  New  England,  1780–1820,  13  Early  American
Studies 586, 602 (2015).  Newspapers carried the story in 
Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York.  Ibid.  Reeve 
ultimately ordered the man to post a bond of £1,000.  Id., at 
603. 

Importantly  for  this  case,  the  surety  laws  also  targeted
the  misuse  of  firearms.  In  1795,  for  example,  Massachu-
setts enacted a law authorizing justices of the peace to “ar-
rest” all who “go armed offensively [and] require of the of-
fender  to  find  sureties  for  his  keeping  the  peace.”    1795 
Mass.  Acts  ch.  2,  in  Acts  and  Resolves  of  Massachusetts,