Criminal Law Mini Thesis

Criminal Law
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Criminal Law
Introduction
Universally, criminal law has been used to serve various purposes, the greatest of which is to prevent and forbid conduct that inflicts or threatens to inflict harm to individuals or other public interests. Such a view has been proposed by Ormerod and Laird (2018), who argued that the best way to define criminal law is to focus on its purpose. Actions that cause harm are considered to be criminal, which means that criminal law serves to condemn all wrongdoing. The current literature on criminal law may have focused on various issues, including the departure from politics to bureaucracy. Many laws governing crime are based on some bureaucratic regimes where expertise and not politics are used to justify the law and its remedies. The focus of this mini-thesis is to summarize core concepts and themes that comprise criminal law. Specifically, the criminal law will be defined and its historical background presented. The principle of criminal law, core theories, types, and jurisdictions are also discussed. Lastly, the limits of criminal law will be established.
Defining Criminal Law
The question of what criminal law is can be answered in several ways. However, Chiao (2019) states that one of the most influential answers is that criminal law condemns wrongdoing and vindicates pre-politically rights. As such, criminal law's intrinsic subject matter is certain moral wrongdoings and responses to these wrongdoings, mostly in the form of condemnatory punishment. Even though this scholar supports this definition that highlights a paradigm shift from political predispositions, he also supports the idea that criminal law and its institutions are subject to the political evaluations that apply to public institutions and public law. In essence, what is considered wrongdoing can be determined by the political institutions of a country similar to the bureaucratic expert-oriented institutions. Therefore, criminal law becomes public law regardless of whether or not it addresses the private rights of individuals. The rationale is that public law also starts with accounting for punishment as a means of facilitating social cooperation. Overall, one of the main definitions of criminal law is public law designed to vindicate actions and behaviors that harm other individuals or public interests.
With the above definition of criminal law, it is important to examine what actions and wrongfulness are prohibited, as well as the core of criminality. The view that criminal law vindicates private rights means that criminal punishment is the result of moral practice. In other words, punishment under moral wrongdoing serves the same purpose under criminal law. Criminalization is the act of prohibiting actions that are considered morally wrongful. In other words, criminalization means identifying and prohibiting conduct that violates rights, harms others, or is inherently wrongful. Therefore, the idea of wrongfulness is based on moral judgment and common sense, a view that predates lawyer-dominated trials (Chiao, 2019). Today, criminal law is set out in countries' legal documents, including constitutions. As such, all actions that violate the various statutes and doctri...