Criminal Law Case Study

The entire criminal justice system can be very frightening and even intimidating if someone fails to understand the meaning of terms used, procedures, laws, and rules (Cook, 2009). Criminal law is among the terms that have been defined differently by various sources. It is mainly concerned with a system of legal rules defining actions that are classified as crimes and the manner of which the government prosecutes people who commit crimes (Snyman, 2014). According to the chapter, some sources use it in a way that is very general that describes it as the entire spectrum of laws that deal with the criminal justice system while others use shorthand ways which terms it as substantive criminal law, which is very true.
In the chapter, criminal law has been well organized by dividing it into misdemeanors and felonies and both have been explained into detail. Misdemeanors refer to offenses that are less serious and the offenders serve time for a year or less in local jails while felonies refer to serious crimes such as rape and murder and

Sources of criminal law have been discussed which include: common law, constitutions, statutory law, and administrative law. A lot of information concerning common law has been discussed including its originality and doctrine of precedence. The latter means if the court comes to a decision concerning a particular matter, they are supposed to rule in the same way if similar scenario repeats in future so as to ensure every individual gets same treatment by courts under the law (Reid, 2013). Same has been done to other sources of criminal law. It is also stated very clearly that in the broadest sense of criminal law encompasses both substantive criminal law and criminal procedure. Murder is a good example of substantive law since there is prohibition of killing another person without