The development of criminal law has been a very long process which was aimed at ensuring justice is upheld. One of the earliest recordings of the development of criminal law was in 2100 BC in what was known as the Code of Hammurabi. During this time, the King who was known as Hammurabi needed to ensure that many crimes that were being committed in his territory needed to be punished and thus formulated the code of Hammurabi which was a set of laws (Diamond, 2013). One of the unique characteristics about the code of Hammurabi was that the law was brutal and the punishment for the criminal offences was considered depending on the crime committed. The laws promoted the doctrine of ‘an eye for an eye’ in which the same action undertaken to the claimant would be performed on the defendant if found guilty (Diamond, 2013). However, it is essential to appreciate the fact that the Code of Hammurabi was one of the laws that brought about the presumption of innocence to a suspect until proven guilty.
As the society got civilized, there was the development of new legal systems. Laws in these legal systems were formulated differently even though at some point they were related. The two main legal systems that are prevalent are the common law system and the civil law system (Norrie, 2014). One of the major differences between the two systems of law is that the common law legal systems is developed by adopting some of the behaviours that have been entrenched in the society as laws whereas the Civil law system relies on leaders formulating and implementing their own laws on their subjects (Milson, 2014). The common legal system was popularised by England in which its former colonies adopted and implemented.
In the United States of America, the country has adopted both the Common law legal system and the Civil law system in which the various states decide on which legal systems they adopt. The states have different punishments for different offenses and even some of them have codified some of the crimes. However, it is essential to understand that the states that have adopted the civil legal system are allowed to look at the common laws in order to make judgements in some of the uncodified crimes. (Mason & Stephenson, 2015).
In future, there are many developments expected to occur in criminal law. There have been emerging issues in the world such as cyber crime due to the development of technology (Downes, Rock & McLaughlin, 2016). Therefore there is need to develop laws that address emerging issues. Increased understanding of criminal law by citizens has also encouraged the contracting of criminal detectives who help in unearthing some of the crimes conducted. There will also be an increased number of professions involved in the practice of criminal law.
References
Milsom, S. F. C. (2014). Historical foundations of the common law. Butterworth-Heinemann.
Norrie, A. (2014). Crime, reason and history: A critical introduction to criminal law. Cambridge University Press.
Diamond, A. S. (2013). Primitive law, past and present. Routledge.
Mason, A. T., & Stephenson, G. (2015). American constitutional law: introductory essays and selected cases. Routledge.
Downes, D., Rock, P., & McLaughlin, E. (2016). Understanding deviance: a guide to the sociology of crime and rule-breaking. Oxford University Press.
