Monday, 21 April 2014

CASEBOOK METHOD ------ BY. MWL. JAPHET MASATU.

CASEBOOK   METHOD.

INTRODUCTION:
The casebook method, similar to but not exactly the same as the case method, is the primary method of teaching law in law schools in the United States. It was pioneered at Harvard Law School by Christopher Columbus Langdell. It is based on the principle that rather than studying highly abstract summaries of legal rules (the technique used in most countries), the best way to learn American law is to read the actual judicial opinions which become the law under the rule of stare decisis (due to its Anglo-American common law origin).

History and technique

To set up the case method of law study, American law professors traditionally collect the most illustrative cases concerning a particular area of the law in special textbooks called casebooks. Some professors heavily edit cases down to the most important paragraphs, while deleting nearly all citations and paraphrasing everything else; a few present all cases in full, and most others are in between. One common technique is to provide almost all of the entire text of a landmark case which created an important legal rule, followed by brief notes summarizing the holdings of other cases which further refined the rule.
Traditionally, the casebook method is coupled with the Socratic method in American law schools. For a given class, a professor will assign several cases from the casebook to read, and may also require students to be familiar with any notes following those cases. In class, the professor will ask students questions about the assigned cases to determine whether they identified and understood the correct rule from the case, if there is one — in certain heavily contested areas of the law, there will not be any one correct rule.
A typical example in the law of contracts is Hadley v Baxendale (1854), a case that is still routinely tested on bar examinations today. Treatises designed for practicing lawyers as well as textbooks for students earning non-legal degrees (i.e., business law courses for business administration students) concisely state the famous rules announced in that case that (1) consequential damages are limited to those foreseen by the parties at the time of contracting, thus implying that (2) a party must notify the other up front of its specific needs in order to expand what is mutually foreseeable and thereby recover consequential damages if the other breaches. Thus stated, Hadley seems simple enough, but a casebook for a law school course will not say that. Rather, the law student must deduce those principles from the text of the Court of Exchequer's slightly archaic mid-19th-century decision.
This teaching method differs in two ways from the teaching methods used in most other academic programs: (1) it requires students to work almost exclusively with primary source material which is often written in obscure or obsolete language; and (2) a typical American law school class is supposed to be a dialogue about the meaning of a case, not a straightforward lecture.
In some law schools, the casebook method is used in conjunction with lectures or other more structured forms of instruction. This is especially true in classes which are more heavily geared toward statutory law, such as tax law (which in the USA is governed by the Internal Revenue Code) and certain areas of commercial law (particularly courses dealing with the Uniform Commercial Code).
This method is also used in other common law countries, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Law school outlines

To accomplish the case method of study, "law school outlines" are used as legal topic study aids. Typically, the outlines are created by law school students, however there are professional outlines also available. An outline typically provides a concise and direct statement of legal issues in a particular area of law, organized according to the typical law school curriculum. In some cases, outlines are organized according to specific professors or courses. Outlines often remove many legal nuances and fact specific distinctions in case law to establish more generalized legal principles. Students must remember to be cautious before relying on outlines written by others found on online databases. They frequently come with copyright notices and may often be outdated. Many such sites also warn their users that relying on these outlines alone will not be sufficient to prepare for an exam and they should only be used as a supplement to the studying process.
Law school outlines help law students focus on the most important material they learned for the semester, and are helpful before an exam. They are necessary because it would be impossible to even skim over all of the material they are expected to cover in a semester.

See also

References

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INTERNATIONAL LEGAL THEORIES ----- BY. MWL. JAPHET MASATU.

INTERNATIONAL   LEGAL   THEORIES.

INTRODUCTION:
International legal theory comprises a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches used to explain and analyse the content, formation and effectiveness of public international law and institutions and to suggest improvements. Some approaches center on the question of compliance: why states follow international norms in the absence of a coercive power that ensures compliance. Other approaches focus on the problem of the formation of international rules: why states voluntarily adopt international legal norms, that limit their freedom of action, in the absence of a world legislature. Other perspectives are policy oriented; they elaborate theoretical frameworks and instruments to criticize the existing rules and make suggestions on how to improve them. Some of these approaches are based on domestic legal theory, others are interdisciplinary, while others have been developed expressly to analyse international law.

Classical approaches to International Law

Natural law

Many early international legal theorists were concerned with axiomatic truths thought to be reposed in natural law. 16th century natural law writer, Francisco de Vitoria, a professor of theology at the University of Salamanca, examined the questions of the just war, the Spanish authority in the Americas, and the rights of the Native American peoples.

Eclectic or Grotian approach

Hugo Grotius a Dutch theologian, humanist and jurist played a key role in the development of modern international law. In his De jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres ("Three Books on the Law of War and Peace") of 1625, and drawing from the Bible and from the St. Augustine's just war theory, he argued that nations as well as persons ought to be governed by universal principle based on morality and divine justice. Drawing, though, from domestic contract law, he argued that relations among polities ought to be governed by the law of peoples, the jus gentium, established by the consent of the community of nations on the basis of the principle of pacta sunt servanda, that is, on the basis of the observance of commitments. On his part, Christian von Wolff, contended the international community should be a world superstate (civitas maxima), having authority over the component member states. Emmerich de Vattel rejected this view and argued instead for the equality of states as articulated by 18th century natural law. In Le droit des gens, Vattel suggested that the law of nations was composed of custom and law on the one hand, and natural law on the other.
During the 17th century, the basic tenents of the Grotian or eclectic school, especially the doctrines of legal equality, territorial sovereignty, and independence of states, became the fundamental principles of the European political and legal system and were enshirned in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia.

Legal positivism

The early positivist school emphasized the importance of custom and treaties as sources of international law. Early positivist scholar Alberico Gentili used historical examples to posit that positive law (jus voluntarium) was determined by general consent. Another positivist scholar, Richard Zouche, published the first manual of international law in 1650.
Legal positivism became the dominant legal theory of 18th century and found its way into international legal philosophy. At the time, Cornelius van Bynkershoek asserted that the bases of international law were customs and treaties commonly consented to by various states. John Jacob Moser emphasized the importance of state practice in international law. Georg Friedrich von Martens, published the first systematic manual on positive international law, Precis du droit des gens moderne de l'Europe. During the 19th century, positivist legal theory became even more dominant due to nationalism and the Hegelian philosophy. International Commercial law became a branch of domestic law: private international law, separate from public international law. Positivism narrowed the range of international practice that might qualify as law, favouring rationality over morality and ethics. The 1815 Congress of Vienna marked the formal recognition of the political and international legal system based on the conditions of Europe.
Modern legal positivists consider international law as a unified system of rules that emanates from the states' will. International law, as it is, is an "objective" reality that must be distinguished from law "as it should be." Classic positivism demands rigorous tests for legal validity. Extralegal arguments, i.e., arguments that have no textual, systemic or historical basis on the law, are deemed irrelevant to legal analysis. There is only hard law, no soft law.[1] Criticisms of positivist international legal theory include its rigidity, its focus on state consent, without allowing for interpretation, and the fact that it does not allow moral judgements regarding a State's conduct as long as it follows international norms.

International Relations - International Law approaches

Legal scholars have drawn from the four main schools of thought in the areas of political science and international relations: realism, liberalism, institutionalism, and constructivism to examine, through an interdisciplinary approach, the content of legal rules and institutions, to explain why and how legal institutions came to be and why they are effective.[2] These methods have led some scholars to reconceptualize international law in general.[3]

Realism

Realism contends that, in an anarchic international system, states are locked in a perpetual struggle for survival that obligates them to maximize their relative power in order to preserve their territory and existence. Since international cooperation is possible only inasmuch as it responds to the states' self-interest in maximizing their power and prospects for survival, states do not pursue cooperation on the basis of normative commitments.[4] According to Realist legal scholars, states adopt only international legal norms that either enhance their power, formalize the subordination of weaker states, or that they intend to violate deliberately to their own advantage.[5] International Law may thus address only peripheral matters that do not impact the states´ power or autonomy. Consequently, for realists, international law is a "tenuous net of breakable obligations"[6]
Within the Realist approach, some scholars have proposed an "enforcement theory" according to which international legal norms are effective insofar as they "publicize clear rules, enhance monitoring of compliance, and institutionalize collective procedures for punishing violations, thereby enhancing the deterrent and coercive effects of a stable balance of power."[7] Thus, the role of reciprocity and sanctions is underlined. Morrow, for instance, notes that:
International politics in modern times generally recognizes no authority above the nation-state. Agreements among states are enforceable only by the agreeing states themselves. This assumption of anarchy poses a paradox for agreements to limit violence during wartime. (...) Reciprocity serves as the main tool to enforce agreements in international politics. Enforcement of an agreement is devolved to the parties themselves. Damaged parties have the option to respond with retaliatory sanctions to a violation of an agreement. The threat of reciprocal sanctions may be sufficient to deter violations, and so agreements can be enforced in international politics.[8]

Liberalism

Based on the Liberal international relations theory, some scholars argue that the states' stance towards international law is determined by their domestic politics and, in particular, by the aggregation of the preferences of key domestic individuals and groups toward the rule of law. Thus, democratic states, having a representative government, are more likely than non-democratic states to accept the legal regulation of both domestic and international politics, and more likely to accept and observe international law. Furthermore, democratic societies are linked by a complex net of interstate, transnational and transgovernmental relations so that both their foreign policy bureaucracies and their civil societies are interested in promoting and strengthening transnational cooperation through the creation and observance of international legal norms.[9] Hence, the adoption of and the compliance with international legal norms among democratic states should be easier and more peaceful than the observance of international law among non-democratic states. In this regard, Slaughter notes that:
Agreements concluded among liberal States are more likely to be concluded in an atmosphere of mutual trust, a precondition that will facilitate any kind of enforcement. In particular, however, the assumptions that these are agreements reached with the participation of a network of individuals and groups in the participating States, and that these States are committed to the rule of law enforced by national judiciaries should lead to more 'vertical' enforcement through domestic courts. This mode of enforcement contrasts with the traditional 'horizontal' mode involving State responsibility, reciprocity, and countermeasures.[10]

Rational Choice and Game Theory

This approach to law applies theories or economics to identify the legal implications of maximizing behavior inside and outside of markets. Economics is the study of ration choice under limited conditions.[11] Rational choice is the assumption that individual actors seek to maximize their preferences.[12] Most of the economic theory employed here is neoclassical traditional economics. Economic techniques include price theory, which evaluates strategic interaction between actors.[13] Transaction cost economics, which incorporates cost of identifying actors, negotiating, and costs of enforcing agreements into price theory. Game Theory, which can demonstrate how actors with maximizing behavior might fail to take action increase join gain.[14] Public choice applies economic tools to problems outside of markets. These tools are used to describe and evaluate law. Using these tools laws are tested for economic efficiency.[15] Economic theories are also used to propose changes in the law. This approach urges the adoption of laws that maximize wealth. Potential application of this approach would begin with a text-based interpretation. A secondary concern is whether or not an actual "market" context is functioning well. Thirdly, ways to improve the imperfect market are proposed. This approach could be used to analyze general legal questions, because this approach provides highly specified rules and provides the rationale for using them. This approach relies on assumptions that perfect competition exists, and that individuals will behave to maximize their preferences. The empirical presence of these conditions is often difficult to determine.

International Legal Process

The classic International Legal Process is the method of studying how international law is practically applied to, and functions within international policy, as well as the study of how international law can be improved.[16] "It concentrates not so much on the exposition of rules and their content as on how international legal rules are actually used by the makers of foreign policy".[17] ILP was developed in response to the "realists from the discipline of international relations",[18] who realized with the beginning of the Cold War how little international law played a role in international affairs. ILP was made a legitimate theory in the 1968 casebook International Legal Process, by Chayes, Ehrlich and Lowenfeldan, in which the American legal process method was adapted to create an international legal process.[19] ILP describes the way international legal processes work, and the formal and informal ways that foreign offices incorporate international law.[17] ILP also measures the extent to which individuals are held accountable for abuses in international conflicts.[20] While ILP recognizes that international law does not force decision makers' actions, it suggests that international law serves as a justification, constraint, and organizing device.[20] Criticism of ILP's lack of normative qualities in its method resulted in the emergence of a new ILP.[21] The New International Legal Process (NLP) incorporates both law as a process and as the values of each society respectively. Unlike the American Legal System, it considers normative values other than democracy, such as "…feminism, republicanism, law and economics, liberalism as well as human rights, peace and protection to the environment."[22] The NLP is unique in its flexibility in adapting to the evolution of values. This component of the method is important in order to resolve the changing of legal standards over time. The NLP shows its true departure from the ILP by addressing what happens in the situation of conflict, as well as what should be happening.

Policy Oriented Perspectives

New Haven Approach

The New Haven School is a policy-oriented perspective on international law pioneered by Myres S. McDougal, Harold D. Lasswell, and W. Michael Reisman.[23] Its intellectual antecedents lie in sociological jurisprudence of Roscoe Pound and the reformist ambitions of the American Legal Realists. From the standpoint of the New Haven approach, jurisprudence is a theory about making social choices. International law itself reflects the expectations of relevant community members about stable patterns of behavior created by assertions of control by legal authorities. The primary jurisprudential and intellectual tasks are the prescription and application of policy in ways that maintain community order and simultaneously achieve the best possible approximation of the community's social goals.[24] These normative social goals or values of the New Haven approach include maximizing shared community values, such as wealth, enlightenment, skill, well-being, affection, respect and rectitude.[25] The teleological goal of New Haven School jurisprudence is the interpretation of international law as a system of creating minimum world public order, with continued progress toward the development of shared values into an optimum order.

Critical Legal Studies

Critical Legal Studies (CLS) emerged as a legal theory in America during the 1970s. It exists to this day as a method of analyzing international law from a highly theoretical perspective.[26] The method proposes that the nature of international law is limited because it is determined by language, which is biased and still stuck in the conventional structures of politics and power.[27] Critical Legal scholars argue that those structures of power can be found within the binaries that exist in legal language[28] (man vs. woman, majority vs. minority, etc.). Recognizing the political aspect of international law, these scholars also argue that universality is impossible.[29] Criticism of this method suggests that this radical practice is impossible to put into application. It was successful, however, in pushing forward other approaches to international law (feminist, cultural relativist, etc.)[30] because of its deep analysis of language, and all the imbalance that it reveals.

Central Case Approach

The central case approach is a method of looking at human rights situations. This approach recognizes the existence of certain universal rights.[31] It begins analyzing a human rights issue by constructing a hypothetical ideal situation in which those rights are applied, a standard against which to compare an actual situation. The central case approach then investigates to what extent, and in what ways the actual situation deviates from the ideal (or the central case).[32] The central case approach allows for more complexity than the traditional binary method of analysis.[33] In binary terms, human rights are simply violated or they are upheld.[34] This does not allow for degrees of severity of a human rights violation, which creates a deceptively simplistic view of a situation. John Finnis developed the concept of a central case as it applied to assessing legal systems;[35] Tai-Heng Cheng was the first to apply it to human rights. If used by decision-makers, the central case approach could be effective in preventing human rights abuses. It takes into account a society's political and social situations in addition to specific human rights abuses.[32] This enables it to detect trends of human rights abuses, and the reasons behind these trends. The depth of a central case analysis exposes the different degrees of human rights abuses that occur, allowing policy makers to focus on the most severe cases and patterns of abuse with more urgency. The central case approach provides an accurate and flexible picture of situations that are in a state of change.[36] Whereas a binary appraisal would conclude whether a human right had been violated at one point in time, the central case approach can detect shifting political and social conditions and patterns that give a more nuanced view of the state of human rights.[36]

Feminist Legal Theory

Feminist legal theory critiques current legal vocabulary and practice by arguing it is patriarchal, presenting men as the norm and women as a deviation from the norm. Feminist theorists propose to change legal language to make it more inclusive of women, or to rethink law completely, so it is possible to promote broader social goals of justice and equality. Feminist methods seek to expose the biases from which international law is written and particularly the notion that women are more vulnerable than men and need special protection under the law. Feminist theorist Hilary Charlesworth criticizes the dialogue of women as victims in need of protection from both men and international law. Additionally, she argues that the irony of the dominant language is that while it aims to especially protect women, the emphasis is on the protection of her honor and not on the protection of her social, cultural and economic rights.

LGBT Legal Theory

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender/Transsexual (LGBT) International Law Theory is a critical school of thought that continues to develop as the shortcomings of international law are realized, in regard to the integration of queer theory into international law theory. While human rights conventions have recently begun to generalize in regard to equality and its recipients, in the past, any discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity have gone largely untouched. The movement of LGBT International Law Theory centers on the inclusion and awareness of LGBT rights (and protection of persons), as well as the integration of queer theory within the realm of international law. As LGBT theory has become more prominent in scholarly works, international courts and international law organizations (particularly the European Union Council and the United Nations) have considered workplace discrimination on the basis of sexuality, issues stemming from the definition of family in regard to homosexual unions, the position of transsexuals in the question of sexual orientation, the need for recognition of LGBT rights in regard to general health advocacy and the HIV/AIDS crisis, the inclusion of and LGBT advocacy group within the UN (with advisor status), and the ongoing active persecution of people engaging in homosexual acts, among other issues.[37] According to scholar Nancy Levit, the challenges for gay legal theory are twofold: to move away from the frailties of both formal equality and antisubordination theories, and to develop ways of representing sexual minorities that will make them more acceptable, if not valuable, in a broader cultural context, that is the critical body of LGBT International Law Theory.[38]

International Law in Ancient Rome

The idea of international law in Roman times is a complicated one. For, not only does the Roman Republic and following empire itself dominate a long period of time in history, but also the very debate over whether or not the term "international law" is an applicable term is not yet decided.[39] Many scholars and authors define international law as "the law governing relations between sovereign, territorial states."[40] Any attempt to find a similar parallel in Roman law would find a logical starting point in the ius gentium (the laws of nations).[41] The ius gentium began as a Roman recognition of like legal practices and institutions (such as slavery) that was found at that time in most states.[42] This brand of law was in fact private law in itself and mainly dictated the way in which the Roman state was to deal with individual foreigners, not entire states.[42] However, when citizenship was granted to all free men in the empire in 212 A.D. ius gentium ceased to cling to its original definition and instead was applied to states as a whole.[40] Some semblance of modern international law can therefore be found in this shift. The actual extent of these origins and their relevance to modern law is a topic that has not yet been approached in any depth.

Third World

Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) is a critical approach to international law that is not a "method" in the strict sense of questioning "what the law is". Rather, it is an approach to law that is unified by a particular set of concerns and analytical tools with which to explore them. It is an approach that draws primarily from the history of the encounter between international law and colonized peoples. TWAIL shares many concepts with post-colonial studies, feminist theory, Critical legal studies, Marxist theory and critical race theory. TWAIL scholarship prioritizes in its study the power dynamic between the First World and Third World and the role of international law in legitimizing the subjugation and oppression of Third World peoples. TWAIL scholars try to avoid presenting the "Third World" as a unified, coherent place but rather use the term to indicate peoples who have the shared experience of underdevelopment and marginalization.
Contemporary TWAIL scholarship has it origins in works of jurists such as Georges Abi-Saab, F. Garcia-Amador R.P. Anand, Mohammed Bedjaoui, and Taslim O. Elias. Over the years, several Western scholars have been sympathetic to the Third World's position and made important contributions to this body of scholarship, and these include, scholars such as C.H. Alexandrowicz, Richard Falk, Nico Schrijver and PJ.I.M. de Waart. David Kennedy and Martti Koskenniemi have also contributed support in their own work. TWAIL as a loose network of scholars has had several conferences thus far.

See also

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LW 102 : CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE ------- BY. MWL. JAPHET MASATU.

LW  102 : CRIMINAL   LAW   AND   PROCEDURE.


INTRODUCTION:

For the 1989 film, see Criminal Law (film).
Criminal law
Fingerprints taken by William James Herschel 1859-1860.jpg
Part of the common law series
Element (criminal law)
Scope of criminal liability
Seriousness of offense
Inchoate offenses
Offence against the person
Homicide
Crimes against property
Crimes against justice
Defences to liability
Other common law areas
Portals
Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It regulates social conduct and proscribes threatening, harming, or otherwise endangering the health, safety, and moral welfare of people. It includes the punishment of people who violate these laws. Criminal law differs from civil law, whose emphasis is more on dispute resolution and victim compensation than on punishment.


History

The first civilizations generally did not distinguish between civil law and criminal law. The first written codes of law were designed by the Sumerians. Around 2100-2050 BC Ur-Nammu, the Neo-Sumerian king of Ur, enacted the oldest written legal code whose text has been discovered: the Code of Ur-Nammu[1] although an earlier code of Urukagina of Lagash ( 2380-2360 BC ) is also known to have existed. Another important early code was the Code Hammurabi, which formed the core of Babylonian law. Only fragments of the early criminal laws of Ancient Greece have survived, e.g. those of Solon and Draco.[2]

The Old Bailey in London (in 1808) was the venue for more than 100,000 criminal trials between 1674 and 1834, including all death penalty cases.
In Roman law, Gaius's Commentaries on the Twelve Tables also conflated the civil and criminal aspects, treating theft (furtum) as a tort. Assault and violent robbery were analogized to trespass as to property. Breach of such laws created an obligation of law or vinculum juris discharged by payment of monetary compensation or damages. The criminal law of imperial Rome is collected in Books 47-48 of the Digest.[3] After the revival of Roman law in the 12th century, sixth-century Roman classifications and jurisprudence provided the foundations of the distinction between criminal and civil law in European law from then until the present time.[4]
The first signs of the modern distinction between crimes and civil matters emerged during the Norman Invasion of England.[5] The special notion of criminal penalty, at least concerning Europe, arose in Spanish Late Scolasticism (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.[6] The development of the state dispensing justice in a court clearly emerged in the eighteenth century when European countries began maintaining police services. From this point, criminal law had formalized the mechanisms for enforcement, which allowed for its development as a discernible entity.

Objectives of criminal law

Criminal law is distinctive for the uniquely serious potential consequences or sanctions for failure to abide by its rules.[7] Every crime is composed of criminal elements. Capital punishment may be imposed in some jurisdictions for the most serious crimes. Physical or corporal punishment may be imposed such as whipping or caning, although these punishments are prohibited in much of the world. Individuals may be incarcerated in prison or jail in a variety of conditions depending on the jurisdiction. Confinement may be solitary. Length of incarceration may vary from a day to life. 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. Fines also may be imposed, seizing money or property from a person convicted of a crime.
Five objectives are widely accepted for enforcement of the criminal law by punishments: retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and restoration. Jurisdictions differ on the value to be placed on each.
  • Retribution – Criminals ought to suffer in some way. This is the most widely seen goal. Criminals have taken improper advantage, or inflicted unfair detriment, upon others and consequently, the criminal law will put criminals at some unpleasant disadvantage to "balance the scales." People submit to the law to receive the right not to be murdered and if people contravene these laws, they surrender the rights granted to them by the law. Thus, one who murders may be executed himself. A related theory includes the idea of "righting the balance."
  • Deterrence – Individual deterrence is aimed toward the specific offender. The aim is to impose a sufficient penalty to discourage the offender from criminal behavior. General deterrence aims at society at large. By imposing a penalty on those who commit offenses, other individuals are discouraged from committing those offenses.
  • Incapacitation – Designed simply to keep criminals away from society so that the public is protected from their misconduct. This is often achieved through prison sentences today. The death penalty or banishment have served the same purpose.
  • Rehabilitation – Aims at transforming an offender into a valuable member of society. Its primary goal is to prevent further offense by convincing the offender that their conduct was wrong.
  • Restoration – This is a victim-oriented theory of punishment. The goal is to repair, through state authority, any injury inflicted upon the victim by the offender. For example, one who embezzles will be required to repay the amount improperly acquired. Restoration is commonly combined with other main goals of criminal justice and is closely related to concepts in the civil law, i.e., returning the victim to his or her original position before the injury.

Selected criminal laws

Many laws are enforced by threat of criminal punishment, and the range of the punishment varies with the jurisdiction. The scope of criminal law is too vast to catalog intelligently. Nevertheless, the following are some of the more known aspects of the criminal law.

Elements

Main article: Element (criminal law)
The criminal law generally prohibits undesirable acts. Thus, proof of a crime requires proof of some act. Scholars label this the requirement of an actus reus or guilty act. Some crimes – particularly modern regulatory offenses – require no more, and they are known as strict liability offenses (E.g. 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.[8]

Actus reus

Main article: Actus reus

An English court room in 1886, with Lord Chief Justice Coleridge presiding
Actus reus is Latin for "guilty act" and is the physical element of committing a crime. It may be accomplished by an action, by threat of action, or exceptionally, by an omission to act, which is a legal duty to act. 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.
Where the actus reus is a failure to act, there must be a duty of care. A duty can arise through contract,[9] a voluntary undertaking,[10] a blood relation with whom one lives,[11] and occasionally through one's official position.[12] Duty also can arise from one's own creation of a dangerous situation.[13] 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.[14] In this case it was held that since a PVS patient could not give or withhold consent to medical treatment, it was for the doctors to decide whether treatment was in the patient's best interest. It was reasonable for them to conclude that treatment was not in the patient's best interest, and should therefore be stopped, when there was no prospect of improvement. It was never lawful 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.
An actus reus may be nullified by an absence of causation. For example, a crime involves harm to a person, the person's action must be the but for cause and proximate cause of the harm.[15] If more than one cause exists (e.g. harm comes at the hands of more than one culprit) the act must have "more than a slight or trifling link" to the harm.[16]
Causation is not broken simply because a victim is particularly vulnerable. This is known as the thin skull rule.[17] However, it may be broken by an intervening act (novus actus interveniens) of a third party, the victim's own conduct,[18] or another unpredictable event. A mistake in medical treatment typically will not sever the chain, unless the mistakes are in themselves "so potent in causing death."[19]

Mens rea

Main article: Mens rea
Mens rea is another Latin phrase, meaning "guilty mind". This is the mental element of the crime. A guilty mind means an intention to commit some wrongful act. Intention under criminal law is separate from a person's motive[20] (although motive does not exist in Scots law).[21]
A lower threshold of mens rea is satisfied when a defendant recognises an act is dangerous but decides to commit it anyway. This is recklessness. It is the mental state of mind of the person at the time the actus reus was committed. For instance, if C tears a gas meter from a wall to get the money inside, and knows this will let flammable gas escape into a neighbour's house, he could be liable for poisoning.[22] Courts often consider whether the actor did recognize the danger, or alternatively ought to have recognised a risk.[23] Of course, a requirement only that one ought to have recognized a danger (though he did not) is tantamount to erasing intent as a requirement. In this way, the importance of mens rea has been reduced in some areas of the criminal law but is obviously still an important part in the criminal system.
Wrongfulness of intent also may vary the seriousness of an offense and possibly reduce the punishment but this is not always the case. A killing committed with specific intent to kill or with conscious recognition that death or serious bodily harm will result, would be murder, whereas a killing effected by reckless acts lacking such a consciousness could be manslaughter.[24] On the other hand, it matters not who is actually harmed through a defendant's actions. The doctrine of transferred malice means, for instance, that if a man intends to strike a person with his belt, but the belt bounces off and hits another, mens rea is transferred from the intended target to the person who actually was struck.[Note: The notion of transferred intent does not exist within Scots' Law. In Scotland, one would not be charged with assault due to transferred intent, but instead assault due to recklessness.] [25]

Strict liability

Main article: Strict liability
Strict liability can be described as criminal or civil liability notwithstanding the lack mens rea or intent by the defendant. Not all crimes require specific intent, and the threshold of culpability required may be reduced. For example, it might be sufficient to show that a defendant acted negligently, rather than intentionally or recklessly. In offenses of absolute liability, other than the prohibited act, it may not be necessary to show the act was intentional. Generally, crimes must include an intentional act, and "intent" is an element that must be proved in order to find a crime occurred. The idea of a "strict liability crime" is an oxymoron. The few exceptions are not truly crimes at all – but are administrative regulations and civil penalties created by statute, such as crimes against the traffic or highway code.

Fatal offenses

Main articles: Murder and Culpable homicide
A murder, defined broadly, is an unlawful killing. Unlawful killing is probably the act most frequently targeted by the criminal law. In many jurisdictions, the crime of murder is divided into various gradations of severity, e.g., murder in the first degree, based on intent. Malice is a required element of murder. 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. Involuntary manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most attenuated guilty intent, recklessness.
Settled insanity is a possible defense.

Personal offenses

Main articles: Assault, Battery (crime), Rape, and Sexual abuse
Many criminal codes protect the physical integrity of the body. 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. Creating a fear of imminent battery is an assault, and also may give rise to criminal liability. Non-consensual intercourse, or rape, is a particularly egregious form of battery.

Property offenses

Main articles: Criminal damage, Criminal Trespass, Theft, Robbery, Extortion, Dacoity, Burglary, and Fraud
Property often is protected by the criminal law. Trespassing is unlawful entry onto the real property of another. Many criminal codes provide penalties for conversion, embezzlement, theft, all of which involve deprivations of the value of the property. Robbery is a theft by force. Fraud in the UK is a breach of the Fraud Act 2006 by false representation, by failure to disclose information or by abuse of position.

Participatory offenses

Main articles: Accomplice, Aid and abet, and Inchoate offenses
Some criminal codes criminalize association with a criminal venture or involvement in criminality that does not actually come to fruition. Some examples are aiding, abetting, conspiracy, and attempt. However, in Scotland, the English concept of Aiding and Abetting is known as Art and Part Liability. See Glanville Williams, Textbook of Criminal Law, (London: Stevens & Sons, 1983); Glanville Williams, Criminal Law the General Part (London: Stevens & Sons, 1961).

Mala in se v. mala prohibita

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. Both are Latin legal terms, mala in se meaning crimes that are thought to be inherently evil or morally wrong, and thus will be widely regarded as crimes regardless of jurisdiction. Mala in se offenses are felonies, property crimes, immoral acts and corrupt acts by public officials. Mala prohibita, on the other hand, refers to offenses that do not have wrongfulness associated with them. Parking in a restricted area, driving the wrong way down a one-way street, jaywalking or unlicensed fishing are examples of acts that are prohibited by statute, but without which are not considered wrong. 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. For this reason, it can be argued that offenses that are mala prohibita are not really crimes at all.[26]

Defenses

Main article: Criminal defenses

Criminal law jurisdictions


International Criminal Court in The Hague
Main articles: Crimes against humanity and United States and the International Criminal Court
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. The Nuremberg trials marked the beginning of criminal fault for individuals, where individuals acting on behalf of a government can be tried for violations of international law without the benefit of sovereign immunity. In 1998 an International criminal court was established in the Rome Statute.

See also

International criminal law

National criminal law


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