Criminal law
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Introduction
The term criminal law, sometimes called penal law, refers to one of various bodies of rules in different jurisdictions whose common characteristic is the possible for unique & frequently strict impositions as penalty for failure to fulfill. Criminal punishment, depending on the offense and jurisdiction, may include implementation, lossof liberty, government supervision (parole or probation), or fines. There are some archetypal crimes, like murder, but the acts that are prohibited are not wholly consistent among different criminal codes, and even within a particular code lines may be blurred as civil infractions may give rise also to criminal penalty. Criminal law naturally is enforced by the government, unlike the civil law, which may be enforced by private parties.
International criminal law is an independent branch of law which deals with international crimes and the courts & tribunals set up to umpire cases in which persons have incurred international criminal liability. It represents a significant departure from 'classical' international law which was mainly considered law created by states for the advantage of states, but tended to ignore the individual as a subject of the law.
Some presidents in international criminal law can be establish in the time before the First World War. However, it was only after the war that a really international criminal tribunal was envisaged to attempt perpetrators of crimes committed in this period. Thus, the Treaty of Versailles stated that an international tribunal was to be set up to try Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. In the event however, the Kaiser was granted asylum in the Netherlands. After the Second World War, the Allied powers set up an international tribunal to try not only war crimes, but crimes against humanity committed under the Nazi regime. The Nuremberg Tribunal held its first session on 20 November 1945 and pronounced judgments on 30 September / 1 October 1946. A similar tribunal was established for Japanese war crimes (The International Military Tribunal for the Far East). It operated from 1946 to 1948.
After the beginning of the war in Bosnia, the United Nations Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1993 and, after the genocide in Rwanda, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1994. The International Law Commission had commenced preparatory work for the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court in 1993; in 1998, at a political Conference in Rome, the Rome Statute establishing the ICC was signed. The ICC issued its first arrest warrants in 2005.
Institutions of international criminal law
Today, the most important institution is the International Criminal Court (ICC), as well as several ad hoc tribunals:
- the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
- the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Apart from these institutions, some 'hybrid' courts and tribunals exist - judicial bodies in which both international and national judges are represented. They are:
- the Special Court for Sierra Leone, (investigating the crimes committed the Sierra Leone Civil War),
- the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, (investigating the crimes of the Red Khmer era),
- the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, (investigating the assassination of Rafik Hariri),
- the war crimes court at Kosovo
See also
- Find the notion "Criminal law" in the legal internet (www)
- Juvenile criminal law in Germany
- International criminal law
- Culpability
- Punishable offence
- Death sentence (global)
- Retaliation
- Ostracism
