Criminal Law

Criminal Law

Introduction

The United States of America, a former colony of the British Empire, has a legal heritage descended from the English common law system. The American legal system maintains law and order; manages large populations, commerce, and the wealth of the nation; and reflects American culture. Through judicial decisions and legislative action, the law has evolved to remain up-to-date and to represent contemporary society. Consequently, the U.S. Constitution, one of the governing documents of American law, functions as a living organic law, a product of the American experience. An understanding of the American legal system requires an examination of the common law system, how it evolved, and how it came to the United States of America.

Common law refers to the system of laws developed in England and adopted by most of the English-speaking world. Common law uses the concept of stare decisis (let the decision stand) as a basis for its system, with past decisions serving as a high source of authority. Judges draw their decisions from existing principles of law, thus reflecting the living values, attitudes, and ethical ideas of the people. English common law developed purely as a product of English constitutional development. By contrast, most countries of continental Europe and the nations settled by them employ the civil law system—the other principal legal system of the democratic world. Civil law rests on Roman law, which was extended to the limits of the Roman Empire. Islamic law, the third major legal system, relies on the Koran, as interpreted by tradition and juristic writings.

Discussion

Criminal Law

Criminal law is the branch of law that establishes and regulates the punishment of crimes or offenses through the imposition of certain penalties (such as confinement in prison, for example).It is possible to distinguish between objective criminal law, which relates to criminal legal norms itself subjective and criminal law, which provides for a penalty to those who update the assumptions provided by the criminal law objective (Garland, 2003).

The main objective of criminal law is to promote respect for the legal rights (all good life of the community or the individual). For this, prohibits conducts that are designed to injure or endanger a legal right. The State has two tools to react to crime: the security (which seek to prevent) and penalties (involving the punishment). The penalty, therefore, implies a restriction on the rights of the person.

Criminal procedural law is the system of rules governing any criminal process from beginning to end: the activity of judges and the substantive law in the judgment. Its function is to investigate, identify and punish (if so required) the conduct constituting a crime, evaluating the particular circumstances in each case.

System of norms, legal rules established by the State, which associates the crime as a fact, as legitimate punishment accordingly. "When it comes to criminal law uses the term with different meanings depending on what it is referring. In this so we can mention a preliminary classification as: substantive criminal law and, on the other hand, the adjective criminal ...