Dear Readers,
I have decided to start off by going into the different branches of law and providing a brief description the subject matter. Hopefully, you can get a better idea of how much the law affects your day to day life without you ever realizing it. Now, this list is quite exhaustive so I’ll be tackling it in parts, with this being the first one. A quick disclaimer; the laws discussed below confine themselves to the United States and New York unless otherwise stated.
What is Law?
Before we get too ahead of ourselves; we must first establish what it is we’re even discussing here. This is a fundamentally difficult question to answer because there is simply no one answer that can accurately describe the idea of law. I would argue that the law is the instrument through which society establishes the norms that govern our everyday life. Let’s take an everyday action as an example; You’re waiting to cross the street but you notice that the light says ‘don’t walk’, so you wait until the light changes (or until the cars start going slower than you can walk in New York). That is something most of us do all the time without a seconds notice. Without the laws and regulations that manage traffic in place, we would live in a very different place.
Criminal Law
I figured it would be best that I start off with every bodies favorite family of law; Criminal law. Criminal law, as most of you know already, is the family of law in which a person(s) is/are prosecuted by the government for an act that has been classified as a crime. Punishment is the remedy to the criminal act, an important fact that is often left out of prime-time television. Crimes are usually categorized as felonies or misdemeanors based on their nature and the maximum punishment that can be imposed. A felony involves serious misconduct that is punishable by death or by imprisonment for more than one year.
Generally, two elements are required in order to find a person guilty of a crime: an overt criminal act and criminal intent. An overt act means that the defendant’s action was done on purpose and it is something that is prohibited by law, and they do not need to know that it was against the law at all. Criminal intent is a bit more difficult to truly explain but the textbook definition would be a little something like; Intent refers to the mental state of mind at the time that the action took place.
Let’s take another real world example; You’re playing baseball with some friends and you lose grip of the bat mid-swing, which flies and hits the pitcher straight on the head, killing him instantly (you’ve been working out). From the facts, it sounds like it was just an odd accident and not some devious criminal homicide.
Now, using the same tools as before, a baseball bat and a friend, lets change the scene a bit. You were playing baseball with some friends, but had to cut it short due to a tragic loss of a pitcher, and are on your way home when you see an old “friend”, the one that stole your dog and had it put down (only a monster could do that). You, still upset by this “friends” actions, decided to introduce their head to the Louisville slugger and so you threw it and, with surprising accuracy, managed to kill your “friend”. Needless to say, the intent that you exhibited in both examples was quite different and it should be fairly obvious that in the second example the desire to hurt your “friend” is what made the factually similar incident a crime.
It isn’t always quite that obvious, which is exactly why it makes for great television. Next update will cover Civil Law and perhaps some of the constitution. Thanks for reading.
-Fernando
