“The buildings, premises and paraphernalia of a nuisance are not legitimate property and have no rights in law.  Damages cannot be recovered for their destruction by an individual.  The question of malice does not enter into the case at all.”

I Bishop’s Criminal Law 828; I Hilliard on Torts, 605.

“At common law it was always the right of a citizen, without official authority, to abate a public nuisance, and without waiting to have it adjudged such by legal tribunal.  His right to do so depended upon the fact of its being a nuisance.  If be assumed to act upon his own adjudication that it was, and such adjudication was afterwards shown to be wrong, he was liable as a wrong-doer for his error, and appropriate damages could be recovered against him.  This common law right still exists in full force.  Any citizen, acting either as an individual or as a public official under the orders of local or municipal authorities, whether such orders be or be not in pursuance of special legislation or charter provisions, may abate what the common law deemed a public nuisance.  In abating it, property may be destroyed, and the owner deprived of it without trial, without notice and without compensation.  Such destruction for public safety or health is not a taking of private property for public uses without compensation, or due process of law, in the sense of the constitution.  It is simply the prevention of its noxious and unlawful use, and depends upon the principle that every man must so use his property as not to injure his neighbors, and that the safety of the public is the paramount law.  These principles are legal maxims or axioms essential to the existence of regulated society.  Written constitutions presuppose them, are subordinate to them, and cannot set them aside.”

These great principles of civil jurisprudence and popular government apply alike in every state in the Union.  An eminent jurist, Judge James Baker, of Evanston, Ill., formerly a resident of Missouri, gives his professional opinion of the late crusading by the women there.  He maintains that it was legal; he points out that the saloons raided, at Denver and Lathrop, were unlawful and that they were “nuisances at common law.”  He quotes Illinois law as follows:  “As the summary abatement of nuisances is a remedy which has ever existed in the law, its exercise cannot be regarded as in conflict with constitutional provisions for the protection of the rights of private property and giving trial by jury.  Formal legal proceedings and trial by jury are not appropriate and have never been used in such cases.”  Judge Baker sums up the case thus:  “The women who destroyed such property are not criminals.  They have the same right to abate such common nuisances as men have to defend their persons or domiciles when unlawfully assailed.  As the women of that state are denied the right to vote or hold office, I think they are fully justified, morally and legally, in protecting their homes, their families, and themselves from the ravages of these demons of vice in the summary manner which the law permits.”