civil law, criminal law and habeas corpus

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civil law, the law governing the relations between private individuals or bodies, as opposed to criminal, administrative, or constitutional law (see private law). Areas covered by civil law include the principles governing commercial transactions, the settlement of disputes in the fields of tort and contract, and matters involving family, property, and inheritance. In England, civil and criminal cases are heard in separate courts of law.

 Civil law systems are those in which Roman law has had a decisive influence on legal principles, methods, and terminology in the field of private law. They are to be found in Continental Europe, Latin America, and parts of Africa and Asia (in modified form). The great 6th-century codification of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis ('Body of civil law'), forms the basis of such systems, which are therefore called civil law systems. The development of different nation-states in Europe led to the codification of laws into distinctive systems, most notably the Code Napoleon, adopted in France in 1804 (and in other European countries through Napoleonic expansion), and the Burgerliches Gesetzbuch, the German Civil Code, which came into force in 1900. Civil law systems were subsequently exported through the process of colonial domination (for example, to some African countries and to Latin America) or imported out of respect for an intellectual tradition (for example, in Japan). An important characteristic of civil law codes is the division of private law into conceptual and organizational categories, such as the law of persons, property, obligations, and delict (tort), following the compilations of the Roman jurists. In principle, these codes require no interpretation, only application. In practice, interpretation and judicial development of the law are required. Judicial reasoning is marked by an economy of style, using logical deductions from the principles deemed to underlie the code. Although case law has acquired an important role as a source of law, there is no system of binding judicial precedent, as in common law systems. The civil law has always accorded a higher status to the doctrinal and analytic work of scholars in the universities. Furthermore, court procedures rely less heavily on oral advocacy than is the case in common law systems. Nevertheless, the resolution of legal issues raised by common social, economic, and political problems is often similar, despite the different methodologies and traditions of the two systems.

criminology, the study of criminal behaviour and of the administration of the criminal law. Salient issues include the measurement, distribution, and causes of crime, and the operations of law-enforcement agencies. Criminological research has shown that official criminal statistics do not accurately measure crime: when members of the public are surveyed, their reports of their own criminal behaviour and of the crimes of which they have been victims indicate far higher levels. To investigate the distribution of crime and the characteristics of criminals, criminologists examine such factors as their age, sex, ethnic background, social class, and place of residence. Criminologists are also interested in the causes of crime. The Italian physician Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909), who is often identified as the first empirical criminologist, tried to relate criminal behaviour to physical and biological characteristics. Later criminologists have tended to draw on sociology by considering social structure and culture (anomie, alienation, or labelling theory, for example) or on psychology by considering the effects of childhood experience (socialization) and personality differences such as introversion and extroversion. Most would now agree that many explanations have force, but that all are partial. This is probably inevitable given the heterogeneous nature of criminal behaviour. Criminologists also study law enforcement and such subjects as plea bargaining, sentencing, and punishment.

 

habeas corpus (Latin, 'you must have the body'), an ancient common-law right which, in the form developed in England since the 15th century, requires an official to provide legal justification before the courts for the imprisonment of a detained person. A habeas corpus writ is a means of testing whether a person has been accorded full legal rights (see due process in law); it does not establish his or her guilt or innocence. It is regarded as a crucial safeguard of the rights of the individual, providing practical and symbolic protection against arbitrary imprisonment in England and Wales, and other countries whose legal systems have developed from the English, such as the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Habeas corpus is generally not found in civil law systems, although in some cases comparable legislation exists. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights stipulates comparable legal justification in court for arrest or detention. (See also detention without trial.)

police, a body of civilian officers with particular responsibility for upholding the law and maintaining public order through crime prevention and crime investigation. By the late 18th century large cities in Western Europe, such as Paris and London, had increasing problems of lawlessness and crime. In France, there had developed a centralized system of police spying, which developed into a national police force in the 19th century. In London the Magistrates' Court at Bow Street pioneered from c.1750 a system of unarmed uniformed 'runners' employed to apprehend criminals. These were developed by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 by the formation of the London Metropolitan Police Force, soon copied in most other major British cities. Police forces have since been adopted by almost all nation-states. The majority of West European countries and all East European countries followed the French pattern of a national police force, and this was adopted by most developing countries. However, in Britain, Denmark, the USA, Canada, and elsewhere a series of local forces has survived, in spite of strong pressures for more centralization.

 In some countries, the national police force is supplemented or paralleled by regional or local bodies, or by groups set up for particular purposes such as riot control, serious crime detection (for example, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI), and other tasks such as traffic control. In addition, national organizations such as railway or airport systems frequently develop their own police forces, with powers of arrest and detention within their areas of operation. Military police forces are given the same powers in respect of service personnel. Most police services make a distinction between uniformed and plain-clothes operations; the former patrol the streets and act as a first line of defence against crime, while the latter are detectives who investigate crime, and who often have close links with intelligence and counter-intelligence bodies. Since the late 19th century, there has been a notable development of secret or political police forces, charged with the control of social life and the monitoring of dissident or subversive elements (see police state).

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criminal law, that branch of the law concerned with wrongdoing against individuals, society, or the state, for which the state has power to seek punishment through the courts. The major goal of criminal law is deterrence and punishment, while that of civil law is individual compensation. Criminal offences consist of two distinct elements; the physical act (the actus reus, 'guilty act') and the requisite mental state with which the act is done (the mens rea, 'guilty mind'). For example, in murder the actus reus is the unlawful killing of a person, while the mens rea is 'malice aforethought' (the intention to ...

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