The nature of criminal law

Criminal law is a very broad and complex subject. This complexity relates to the nature of crime. Criminal acts vary in seriousness; the same act may be a criminal offence in one country and not in another. Equally, the same act can be both a criminal offence and a civil wrong. This gives rise to several questions. For instance, what is a crime and how do you know whether given conduct is or is not a crime? Unfortunately no such definition has ever, or is ever likely to be found. The best can be offered to say is that a criminal offence is a conduct which may be followed by criminal proceedings and sentence. So the difference lies not in the nature of the act but in the legal consequences which follow it.

Criminal law tends to represent society’s attitude towards conduct. The question of what acts can be followed by criminal proceedings can only be answered by reference to the law as laid down by the legislature of the country.

According to another definition, crime is considered such because it consists in wrongdoing which directly and in serious degree threatens the society and well-being of society, and because it is not safe to leave it repressable only by compensation of the injured party.

Thus, to seek for any common, distinguishing feature and through this a single definition of crime is an impossible task.

What is a crime?

Crime is categorized as a part of public law — the law regulating the relations between citizens and the state. Crimes can be thought of as acts which the state considers to be wrong and which can be punished by the state. Criminal law is one of two main branches of what is known in Western society as positive law (the body of law imposed by the state); the other is civil law.

In different times and places what has been considered a crime has varied widely. But in the modern world there are certain acts such as treason, murder, robbery, assault, and rape that are almost universally regarded as crimes. Treason, or disloyalty to one’s group, especially in time of war is perhaps one of the most universal and among the earliest acts to have been recognized as a public wrong.

In all modern civilized societies, murder is regarded as a crime. In ancient cultures and in some primitive societies that still exist, however, killing a human being was and is a relatively private matter to be dealt with by families or larger kinship groups. Deliberate killing such as infanticide, cannibalism, head hunting, or the killing of the very old is classified as murder in modern societies, but such practices were viewed as customary and acceptable by ancient cultures and even by some 20^th-century tribes in remote parts of the world.

New laws or new interpretations of existing laws may make activities criminal that were once legal or, on the other hand, they may legalize acts that were once criminal. For example, the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on Jan. 29, 1919, prohibited the manufacture or sale of alcoholic beverages and the importing of them into the country. From 1920 until the amendment was repealed in 1933, something that had been legal in most parts of the United States had become a crime.

There are some acts which are crimes in one country but not in another. For example, it is a crime to drink alcohol in Saudi Arabia, but not in Egypt. It is a crime to smoke marijuana in England, but not (in prescribed places) in the Netherlands. It is a crime to have more than one wife at the same time in France, but not in Indonesia. In general, however, there are quite a lot of agreements among states as to which acts are criminal. A visitor to a foreign country can be sure that stealing, physically attacking someone or damaging their property will be unlawful. But the way of dealing with people suspected of crime may be different from his own country.

It is societies acting through their governments that make the rules declaring what acts are illegal. Hence, war is not a crime. Although it is the most violent of human activities, it has not been declared illegal by governments or their agencies. But petty theft the stealing of a loaf of bread is a crime because the laws of most states and nations have said so.

Criminal Conduct

A crime is defined as such by law. This first principle of legality is the keystone of criminal law. The principle directs that laws defining offenses be clear and strictly interpreted. And it forbids the application of the law retroactively, meaning a law must have been in effect at the time the act was committed.

Legal systems traditionally do not allow double jeopardy, meaning prosecuting someone more than once for the same offense. It is possible at times for an individual to be tried for essentially the same act in two different jurisdictions, or areas of authority. In the United States a person may be tried for murder in a state court and later tried for the violation of the victim's civil rights in a federal court.

All systems of law have statutes of limitation, or laws that restrict the length of time within which legal proceedings may be brought against a person. Such statutes are enacted to protect against stale claims after evidence has been lost, memories have faded, or witnesses have died or disappeared. The periods vary depending on the seriousness of the offense, in German law, for instance the periods range from three months for petty misdemeanors to 30 years for crimes involving a life sentence. In many countries, including the United Stales, there is no statute of limitations for certain serious crimes such as murder.

Legal systems also define in what courts specific crimes will be prosecuted. In the United Slates such crimes as murder, arson, rape, burglary, robbery, and shoplifting are prosecuted in state or local courts. For a crime to be dealt with in a federal court, it must be an offense against federal law, or it must come to the federal court as the result of an appeal of a decision made in another court. Most governments claim jurisdiction over the acts of their own citizens even when these acts have occurred abroad. Therefore, most countries decline any obligation to surrender their citizens to the jurisdiction of other countries. This is called a refusal to extradite. Even within the United States one state may refuse to extradite an alleged criminal to another state for trial.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1266