Criminal law
It proscribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and welfare of people inclusive of one's self.
Criminal procedure is a formalized official activity that authenticates the fact of commission of a crime and authorizes punitive or rehabilitative treatment of the offender.
[3] In Roman law, Gaius's Commentaries on the Twelve Tables also conflated the civil and criminal aspects, treating theft (furtum) as a tort.
[6] The special notion of criminal penalty, at least concerning Europe, arose in Spanish Late Scholasticism (see Alfonso de Castro), when the theological notion of God's penalty (poena aeterna) that was inflicted solely for a guilty mind, became transfused into canon law first and, finally, to secular criminal law.
[8] The development of the state dispensing justice in a court clearly emerged in the eighteenth century when European countries began maintaining police services.
Criminal law is distinctive for the uniquely serious, potential consequences or sanctions for failure to abide by its rules.
Government supervision may be imposed, including house arrest, and convicts may be required to conform to particularized guidelines as part of a parole or probation regimen.
Five objectives are widely accepted for enforcement of the criminal law by punishments: retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and restoration.
Under the Road traffic Act 1988 it is a strict liability offence to drive a vehicle with an alcohol concentration above the prescribed limit).
Nevertheless, because of the potentially severe consequences of criminal conviction, judges at common law also sought proof of an intent to do some bad thing, the mens rea or guilty mind.
As to crimes of which both actus reus and mens rea are requirements, judges have concluded that the elements must be present at precisely the same moment and it is not enough that they occurred sequentially at different times.
For example, the act of A striking B might suffice, or a parent's failure to give food to a young child also may provide the actus reus for a crime.
A duty can arise through contract,[11] a voluntary undertaking,[12] a blood relation with whom one lives,[13] and occasionally through one's official position.
[15] On the other hand, it was held in the U.K. that switching off the life support of someone in a persistent vegetative state is an omission to act and not criminal.
Since discontinuation of power is not a voluntary act, not grossly negligent, and is in the patient's best interests, no crime takes place.
It has always been illegal to take active steps to cause or accelerate death, although in certain circumstances it was lawful to withhold life sustaining treatment, including feeding, without which the patient would die.
[19] However, it may be broken by an intervening act (novus actus interveniens) of a third party, the victim's own conduct,[20] or another unpredictable event.
Manslaughter (Culpable Homicide in Scotland) is a lesser variety of killing committed in the absence of malice, brought about by reasonable provocation, or diminished capacity.
The crime of battery is traditionally understood as an unlawful touching, although this does not include everyday knocks and jolts to which people silently consent as the result of presence in a crowd.
While crimes are typically broken into degrees or classes to punish appropriately, all offenses can be divided into 'mala in se' and 'mala prohibita' laws.
Mala prohibita statutes are usually imposed strictly, as there does not need to be mens rea component for punishment under those offenses, just the act itself.
[28] Public international law deals extensively and increasingly with criminal conduct that is heinous and ghastly enough to affect entire societies and regions.
The formative source of modern international criminal law was the Nuremberg trials following the Second World War in which the leaders of Nazism were prosecuted for their part in genocide and atrocities across Europe.
