Ellingburg v. United States · ¶51

Public wrongs were injuries to the sovereign. A public wrong was “a breach and violation of public rights and duties, which affect the whole community, considered as a community.” Ibid. Because a public wrong injured the community, it was deemed an injury to the sovereign in his sovereign capacity. 4 Blackstone 2–7. It followed that an action to redress a public wrong was brought on behalf of the sovereign, not the victim. J. Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government 7 (J. Gough ed. 1948) (Locke). In concrete terms, actions for public wrongs were brought in England on behalf of the King, and here on behalf of the State or the United States—typically by public prosecutors, rather than privately by the victims. The sovereign “is supposed by the law to be the person injured by every infraction of the public rights belonging to that community, and is therefore in all cases the proper…

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