ncnrs hclicxc it will alwaws gi\e the right result. Other factors may influence their stance though the\' cannot say so. I’irst, law is in general \ er\' resistant to change.'^ Second, there is the problemt)f deciding how else the dispute will he resohed. Should it simpK’ he aliowed to fester.' .\ serious crime has been committed. There is considerahle ev idence against the accused, hut not enough for the legal standards of the time. Should he just walk awa\’, despite the wrath of members of the comnumit\? What if there should he retaliation which main’ might regard as justified.' The main point of a legal process is to resoKe a dispute with the aim of inhibiting further unregulated conflict.'' d'hird, there is the hope, conscious or unconscious, that the threat of the ordeal will persuade the guilt\’ to confess. I hat e chosen to look at aspects of the ordeal from our earliest e\ idence because the suggestion might be made that d'he Last Best (diance is simply to be e.xplained be survieal from a primitit e to a rational age. fhe suggestion might be, for instance, that when Roman law was perhaps as rational as law can be, the legal oath flourished in its limited circumstances as a sur\ i\ al from the time w hen all belie\ ed in the di\ ine force of the oath. 1 would rather suggest, though proof can new er be adduced for remote origins, that the limited scope and use of legal oath and ordeal in the instances e.xamined are not sur\ i\ als but original. In no sense, howewer, do 1 intend to suggest that there are no cases where a procedure continues to sur- \ i\ e long after the reasons for it ha\ e been forgotten. .\n example from Blackstone will soon appear. I ha\ e, as mentioned, chosen to discuss aspects of the ordeal from the earliest time for which we ha\ e e\ idence, but Robert Bartlett has comincingh' shown that in the he\ da\ of the ordeal it was used in criminal cases onl\’ when there was considerable but not sufficient 34 See, e.g., Watson, Society, passim. 35 See Alan Watson, The Nature o^takv (Edinburgh, 1977). 139
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