History

Criminal law to me comes out black or white it’s made up of rules that a violation has been committed or not. Criminal law and procedures are a set of laws and rules that that states set to regulate people’s actions. Laws allow the states to punish us for not obeying the rules. Because of the fear of breaking the rules it helps regulate behavior for citizens who live in that state.

 Criminal law comes from common law and from statute law. Statute law is always changing due to crimes and situations, as for common law it has been unchanged. One thing all these laws have in common is it must always follow the Constitution.

In addition to criminal state laws the federal government have their own criminal codes. Typically, federal crimes deal with activities that either extend beyond state boundaries or directly impact federal interests.

The U.S. Supreme Court, pursuant to its authority under the Rules Enabling Act, first promulgated the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, (F.R.Crim.Pro.) which Congress, in turn, passed. The Federal Rules outline the procedure for conducting federal criminal trials. Similarly, states have their own codes of criminal procedure of which many closely model the Federal Rules. The Federal Rules incorporate and expound upon all guarantees included within the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights. A few of the rights guaranteed to criminal defendants by the Constitution include the guarantees of due process and equal protection under the laws, the right to have legal counsel present, the right to confront witnesses, the right to a jury trial, and the right to not testify against oneself. While state constitutions and procedural rules may increase the protection afforded to criminal defendants, they may not offer less protection than that guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

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.

The similarly significant Commentaries of Gaius on the Twelve Tables also conflated the civil and criminal aspects, treating theft or 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.