Codified Law Within Civil and Criminal Definition (Essay Sample)

CONTEMPORARY ISSUE IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE
CODIFIED LAW WITHIN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL DEFINITION
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A civil law is a codified law. Codification of common law rearranges and displace prior case decisions and statutes. It involves the rearrangement for the whole law source that has been relied upon to solve a particular matter. Hence, whenever the criminal laws are codified, all the statutes contained in the new code take the place of the laws that existed before the codification.
Nations with civil law systems have complete and continuous up to date legal codes. These codes specify cases worth to be brought before a criminal court, relevant procedures, and the fitting punishment for the offense. The codes differentiate various categories of law: substantive law identifies which acts can be subjected to criminal prosecution, the procedural law identifies how to decide whether a given action deserves to be termed as a criminal act, and the penal law identifies a proper penalty (Rose, 1994).
In the civil law system, the role of a judge is to determine the facts of the case and appropriately apply the provision to the relevant code. Although, a judge usually presents a formal case, investigate the case, and determine the case, he also work under the jurisdiction directed by a comprehensive codified law (Rose, 1994). Decisions made by a judge is, thus less important in shaping the civil laws than the legislator’s and scholor’s decisions drafting and interpreting the codes.
US law is termed as the common law system of jurisprudence in which previous cases or precedents are used to determine court procedures and to determine the outcome of the matter. This system also involves the interpretation of written laws such as the regulations, constitution and ordinances.
Currently, the Congressional Acts such as federal statutes are published chronologically and signed by the President, in the official pamphlet referred as Slip Laws, and chronologically grouped as Session Laws. When the session law is published it is called United States Statutes at Large. An act may be categorized as either private law or public law.
Due to various laws on different topics or acts, the congress acts are rearranged and published in a subject matter codification into the United States Code by the Office Of The Law Revision Counsel. The US Code is divided into titles and numbered from 1 to 54. Normally, public laws are codified. Presently, the new edition of the US Code is promulgated after six years with each title printed yearly. The procedural laws have also been codified by most states. The codes include the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the Federal Rules of Evidence.
In code form, many statutes may affect more than one topic. For instance, the statute which makes evasion of tax a felony affects both the criminal law and tax law, yet it is only found in the Internal Revenue Code. Other taxation statutes are also found in the Bankruptcy Code or Judiciary Code titled 11 and 27 of the US Code respectively (Rose, 1994).
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