Criminal Justice

Criminal Verses Civil Law

Tim Vaage

Kaplan University

CJ 230

Professor Elise Rego

October, 16 2010

Civil Cases involve private disputes between persons or organizations. Criminal cases involve an action that is considered to be harmful to society as a whole. Civil cases involve lawsuits, usually a person suing another person, organization or corporation, this is usually referred to as parties or litigants. This can be taken to federal court for violation of federal statutes or constitutional rights. In criminal cases a crime is an accusation or an indictment and when a court determines that an individual has committed a crime that person will receive a sentence (Find Law, Rueters T. 2010).

Criminal law involves distinctly illegal behavior and Civil law involves disagreements when no law has been broken. Criminal cases consist of such crimes as murder, battery, assault, rape and much more. Civil cases are disputes between property owners and tenants or corporations. In criminal law the government files the litigation or lawsuit, in civil law the plaintiff files the lawsuit and is usually a private party.

Punishments are also different; in criminal law the defendant can be punished by incarceration, fines or even execution. In civil law the losing party of the case has to reimburse the other party financially or for damages usually due to malicious intent or gross negligence (Difference, Main K, 2003).

Basically Criminal law in any that you violate in criminal code , where as in civil law you often violate someone’s rights and have to pay financial damages to the plaintiff for these violations, it can also in many case in civil case the defendant can counter sue the plaintiff for damages if they have the evidence to support a lawsuit.

References

Main, K. (2003). Difference between criminal and civil law [Wise Geek]. In Wise Geek. Retrieved October 16, 2010, from A. Joseph website: http://www.wisegeek.com

Rueters, T. (2010). Find Law. In Find...