Posse Comitatus
Posse Comitatus (Copied with permission from The Free Encyclopedia on US Law) [Latin, Power of the county.] Referred at Common Law to all males over the age of fifteen on whom a sheriff could call for assistance in preventing any type of civil disorder. The notion of a posse comitatus has its roots in ancient English Law, growing out of a citizen's traditional duty to raise a "hue and cry" whenever a serious crime occurred in a village, thus rousing the fellow villagers to assist the sheriff in pursuing the culprit. By the seventeenth century, trained militia bands were expected to perform the duty of assisting the sheriff in such tasks, but all males age fifteen and older still had the duty to serve on the posse comitatus. In the United States, the posse comitatus was an important institution on the western frontier, where it became known as the posse. At various times vigilante committees, often acting without legal standing, organized posses