OPPapers.com

Inside Criminal Law

The primary function is to protect citizens from harm to their safety and property. Some examples of this would be murder, theft, or arson. The second function is to maintain and teach social values as well as social boundaries. Some examples of this would be drinking and driving, speed limits, or bigamy.

The written sources of American criminal law are Constitutional Law, Statutory Law, Administrative Law, and Case Law. The purpose of Constitutional law covers areas of law like relationships between states and the federal governments, the rights of individuals and citizens of the United States and all other areas concerned with constitutional law. The purposes of statutory law are defined as laws which are passed by the federal Congress and the various state legislatures. These statutes are the basis for statutory law. The legislature passes statutes which are later put into the federal code of laws or pertinent state code of laws. Statutory law also includes local ordinances, which is a statute passed by a county government to guard areas not covered by federal or state laws. Statutory law also covers areas which are governed exclusively by statutory law and where case law has no impact. The Administrative law is the body of law created by administrative agencies i.e., Department of Labor, the Federal Communications Commission, or the President in the form of rules, regulations, procedures, orders, and decisions. Agencies are given the authority for these activities by laws enacted by Congress. Case law relies to certain extent on how courts interpret a particular statute. Case law governs the impact court decisions have on future cases. Unlike most civil law systems, common law systems follow the doctrine of stare decisis in which lower courts usually make decisions consistent with previous decisions of higher courts. Decisions in the courts of most civil law jurisdictions are generally very short, referring only to the statutes used.

One...