An extraordinary story from England illustrates how far the modern bureaucratic state can drift from ordinary ideas of justice. Writing in The Daily Sceptic on 28 October 2026, Guy Carpenter describes how he was prosecuted after picking up a dead deer from the roadside. His intention was simple: take the animal home and use it for food. Instead, he found himself confronting the police, criminal proceedings, legal expenses and months of anxiety.
Carpenter had discovered the deer on the A66 in County Durham in June 2026. He believed that removing an already dead animal from a public road was perfectly reasonable. The police thought otherwise. Under the Deer Act 1991, removing a deer carcass without the appropriate consent can constitute an offence. What Carpenter regarded as a harmless act of thrift became a matter for the criminal justice system.
According to his account, the proceedings continued for nearly five months before a senior police officer intervened and the prosecution was dropped on public-interest grounds. By then Carpenter had incurred legal expenses and considerable inconvenience. The eventual decision not to prosecute did not return the time and money he had lost.
The case raises a question much larger than the ownership of a dead deer. What has happened to the traditional English conception of liberty, and how does it differ from the legal philosophy associated with continental European systems, particularly the Napoleonic Code?
English common law developed over many centuries, beginning in its recognisable form after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Rather than constructing an entirely new legal system from a comprehensive written code, English judges gradually developed principles through the resolution of individual disputes. Their decisions established precedents that later courts were expected to follow.
This process eventually produced the doctrine of stare decisis, under which courts generally follow relevant decisions of higher courts. Legal rules developed incrementally, through practical experience and the application of established principles to new circumstances.
Common law was therefore not simply a collection of commands issued by rulers. It was also a body of principles developed through judicial reasoning, customary practices and the recognition of established rights.
The great constitutional landmarks of English history strengthened this tradition. Magna Carta in 1215 established important limits upon arbitrary royal power, although its original protections were much narrower than modern popular mythology suggests. Later developments, including the Petition of Right in 1628, the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and the Bill of Rights 1689, contributed to the gradual establishment of constitutional government and legal restraints upon executive authority.
The central political idea was that government itself must be subject to law. A ruler could not simply imprison subjects, confiscate property or impose penalties according to personal whim. Public power required lawful justification.
From this tradition emerged a principle closely associated with English liberty: the ordinary citizen may generally do whatever the law does not prohibit, while public officials must possess legal authority for their actions.
The distinction is fundamental. The citizen does not ordinarily require advance permission to engage in every harmless activity. Government, by contrast, must be able to identify the legal source of its authority when interfering with liberty.
This does not mean that English common law ever produced unlimited freedom. Parliament could enact restrictive legislation, and the common law itself contained numerous prohibitions. Nevertheless, the presumption of ordinary liberty became an important feature of the English constitutional imagination.
The continental European tradition developed differently. Roman law exerted a much greater influence upon the legal systems of mainland Europe, where legal principles were increasingly organised into comprehensive legislative codes.
The most famous example was the French Civil Code of 1804, commonly called the Napoleonic Code. Introduced under Napoleon Bonaparte, it sought to establish a unified system of civil law governing property, contracts, family relationships and other matters.
Before the French Revolution, different regions of France operated under varying combinations of local custom, Roman law and royal legislation. The Napoleonic Code helped replace this fragmented system with a more uniform legal framework.
Its ambition was rational organisation. Rather than relying principally upon centuries of judicial precedent, the law would be expressed through written rules that citizens and courts could consult.
This produced a different conception of the judicial role. In the English tradition, judges helped develop the law through authoritative decisions. In the French tradition, judges were traditionally expected to apply and interpret the legislative code, with less formal emphasis upon precedent as an independent source of law.
The distinction should not be exaggerated. Modern French courts interpret legislation extensively, and their decisions have substantial practical authority. English courts, meanwhile, routinely apply detailed statutes enacted by Parliament. Both traditions have evolved, and their differences are less absolute than they once appeared.
Nor is it correct to suggest that under the Napoleonic Code citizens may do nothing unless the state explicitly permits it. French civil law recognises private autonomy, property rights and individual liberty. The famous principle that conduct cannot be punished unless prohibited by law is also deeply embedded in continental European criminal law.
The real distinction lies in the historical organisation of legal authority. Common law gives particular importance to judicial precedent and the gradual development of legal principles. The continental civil-law tradition places greater emphasis upon systematic legislation and codification.
Nevertheless, the contrast helps illuminate an important political development. Britain has retained its common-law institutions while increasingly governing ordinary life through detailed statutes, regulations, licensing requirements and administrative rules.
The result can be a society in which the formal language of liberty survives while the practical space for independent action becomes progressively narrower.
Carpenter's experience illustrates this possibility. The relevant law was not an ancient common-law rule concerning theft. It was a modern statute, the Deer Act 1991, enacted to regulate activities involving deer and to combat poaching.
The distinction matters because legislation can criminalise conduct that ordinary people would not instinctively regard as wrongful. A person may act without dishonesty, violence or any apparent intention to injure another, yet still fall within the wording of a statutory offence.
Of course, the fact that conduct appears harmless does not automatically mean it should be lawful. Environmental protection, food safety, wildlife management and property rights can justify restrictions that are not immediately obvious to members of the public.
Indeed, the British Deer Society advises against eating deer found dead, including roadkill, because the cause of death, condition of the carcass and possible contamination may be uncertain. But the existence of a legal restriction does not settle whether prosecution is a proportionate response to a particular incident.
That is where discretion and the public interest become essential. Police and prosecutors should not simply ask whether an offence might technically have occurred. They should also consider the seriousness of the conduct, the available evidence, the public benefit of proceedings and whether criminal punishment would serve any sensible purpose.
According to Carpenter, the prosecution was ultimately abandoned because it was not considered to be in the public interest. If that judgment was appropriate in October, why was it not reached months earlier?
This question goes to the heart of the modern administrative state. A legal system can impose substantial burdens upon a person without ever securing a conviction. The individual may face legal fees, missed work, uncertainty, reputational damage and the psychological pressure of criminal proceedings. Even an eventual acquittal or withdrawal may provide little practical remedy for those losses.
The expression that the process itself becomes the punishment captures a genuine problem. The state possesses institutional resources, professional lawyers and the capacity to pursue proceedings over long periods. The ordinary citizen must often finance a defence personally, sometimes at a cost disproportionate to the alleged offence. In such circumstances, formal equality before the law may coexist with enormous practical inequality between the individual and the state.
This problem is not peculiar to Britain. Australia, which inherited the English common-law tradition, has experienced its own expansion of administrative regulation. Environmental controls, planning rules, occupational licensing, public-health directions and numerous other statutory schemes regulate activities that earlier generations might have undertaken without official involvement.
Some of these rules serve legitimate purposes. Modern industrial and urban societies require protections against risks that traditional legal systems were never designed to address. The difficulty arises when the accumulation of restrictions becomes so extensive that ordinary citizens can scarcely know whether everyday conduct is lawful.
The proliferation of offences also increases the importance of administrative discretion. When almost any unusual activity potentially intersects with some statutory prohibition, the question of who is investigated and prosecuted becomes increasingly significant.
A society may possess thousands of laws, but those laws are not necessarily enforced uniformly. Authorities must allocate limited resources and decide which offences warrant attention. Such decisions inevitably involve judgments about priorities.
Carpenter contrasts the resources devoted to his case with unresolved burglaries and assaults in the same police area. His frustration is understandable. Citizens expect the criminal justice system to prioritise serious threats to personal safety and property rather than devote disproportionate effort to marginal offences. That expectation does not mean wildlife legislation should never be enforced. It means enforcement must remain proportionate to the conduct involved and the public interest served.
The historical comparison with the Napoleonic tradition becomes most useful at this point. The danger is not that Britain has literally adopted French law. It has not. Rather, Britain and Australia may be developing an increasingly administrative conception of government in which detailed statutory commands displace the older cultural presumption that citizens should be left alone unless there is a substantial reason to interfere.
This transformation can occur without abolishing common-law courts, repealing Magna Carta or formally abandoning constitutional liberties. It can happen gradually, through the cumulative effect of thousands of individual regulations.
Each new rule may appear defensible in isolation. One protects wildlife, another regulates property, another addresses public health, and another establishes administrative procedures. But together they can create a dense network of legal obligations that few ordinary citizens fully understand.
The cumulative burden may be especially severe for people attempting to live independently. A person who grows food, repairs equipment, gathers natural materials, keeps animals or pursues a modest self-sufficient lifestyle may encounter regulations designed primarily around commercial or institutional activities. The irony is that activities traditionally associated with independence and thrift can become legally complicated, while participation in heavily regulated commercial systems is treated as normal.
There is also a philosophical issue concerning the relationship between law and morality. The fact that Parliament has prohibited an action does not necessarily establish that the action is morally wrong. Conversely, an action may be morally reprehensible without violating any specific criminal statute.
A healthy legal culture recognises this distinction. Law should protect legitimate interests and maintain public order, but it should not be confused with a complete catalogue of moral duties.
The danger of excessive regulation is that obedience to rules can become an end in itself. Officials may concentrate upon whether a technical provision has been breached while losing sight of the purpose for which the law was enacted.
The common-law tradition, at its best, has emphasised reasoned judgment, proportionality and the importance of established liberties. Yet these values do not arise automatically from the existence of judicial precedent. They must be maintained through legislation, judicial interpretation, administrative practice and public expectations.
A common-law country can become highly restrictive. A civil-law country can protect extensive personal freedoms. The decisive issue is not simply the historical label attached to the legal system, but the limits placed upon state power and the respect shown to individual liberty.
That is the larger significance of Carpenter's account. The troubling aspect is not merely that a man was investigated for taking a dead deer. It is that an apparently minor incident developed into months of legal proceedings before the authorities decided that pursuing it served no worthwhile public purpose.
A legal system that requires ordinary citizens to spend substantial sums defending themselves against disproportionate proceedings risks undermining respect for the law itself.
The British constitutional tradition was built upon the proposition that government must be restrained by law. But the modern problem is increasingly whether law itself, through its sheer volume and complexity, can become an instrument of unnecessary restraint.
Magna Carta did not promise freedom from every regulation, and the common law was never a guarantee against bureaucratic excess. Nevertheless, the historical aspiration remains valuable: government should justify interference with ordinary life, not treat every independent action as an opportunity for official supervision.
The lesson from the roadkill prosecution is therefore larger than a dispute over wildlife legislation. It concerns the kind of relationship that should exist between the citizen and the state. Is the ordinary person presumed free unless there is a sound legal and public-interest reason to intervene? Or is he increasingly expected to navigate a maze of permissions, prohibitions and administrative procedures before undertaking even modest activities?
Britain has not abandoned common law for the Napoleonic Code. The more disturbing possibility is that it has preserved the outward institutions of common-law liberty while gradually weakening the practical culture of restraint upon which those institutions depend.
The ultimate measure of freedom is not how frequently politicians praise it, or how many constitutional traditions a nation celebrates. It is how much lawful independence ordinary people can exercise without being subjected to unnecessary interference.
When picking up a dead deer can produce months of criminal proceedings, it is reasonable to ask whether that balance has shifted too far in favour of the state. And if the common-law tradition is to mean anything in the modern world, it must remain more than an historical curiosity. It must continue to protect the ordinary citizen against the needless exercise of official power.
https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/28/when-the-police-charged-me-for-picking-up-roadkill-i-knew-english-freedom-had-died/