A statute of limitations, known in civil law systems as a prescriptive period, is a law passed by a legislative body to set the maximum time after an event within which legal proceedings may be initiated. In most jurisdictions, such periods exist for both criminal law and civil law such as contract law and property law, though often under different names and with varying details.
In criminal law, mens rea is the mental state of a defendant who is accused of committing a crime. In common law jurisdictions, most crimes require proof both of mens rea and actus reus before the defendant can be found guilty.
Burglary, also called breaking and entering (B&E) and housebreaking, is the act of illegally entering a building or other areas without permission, typically with the intention of committing a further criminal offence. Usually that offence is theft, larceny, robbery, or murder, but most jurisdictions include others within the ambit of burglary. To commit burglary is to burgle, a term back-formed from the word burglar, or to burglarize.
The American Law Institute (ALI) is a research and advocacy group of judges, lawyers, and legal scholars established in 1923 to promote the clarification and simplification of United States common law and its adaptation to changing social needs. Members of ALI include law professors, practicing attorneys, judges and other professionals in the legal industry. ALI writes documents known as "treatises", which are summaries of state common law. Many courts and legislatures look to ALI's treatises as authoritative reference material concerning many legal issues. However, some legal experts and the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, along with some conservative commentators, have voiced concern about ALI rewriting the law.
Battery is a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact, distinct from assault, which is the act of creating apprehension of such contact.
The rule of felony murder is a legal doctrine in some common law jurisdictions that broadens the crime of murder: when someone is killed in the commission of a dangerous or enumerated crime, the offender, and also the offender's accomplices or co-conspirators, may be found guilty of murder.
In the United States, state law refers to the law of each separate U.S. state.
David Dudley Field II was an American lawyer and law reformer who made major contributions to the development of American civil procedure. His greatest accomplishment was engineering the move away from common law pleading towards code pleading, which culminated in the enactment of the Field Code in 1850 by the state of New York.
Malaysian legal history has been determined by events spanning a period of some six hundred years. Of these, three major periods were largely responsible for shaping the current Malaysian system. The first was the founding of the Melaka Sultanate at the beginning of the 15th century; second was the spread of Islam in the indigenous culture; and finally, and perhaps the most significant in modern Malaysia, was British colonial rule which brought with it constitutional government and the common law system.
The criminal law of Australia is the body of law in Australia that relates to crime.
Codification of laws is a common practice in the Philippines. Many general areas of substantive law, such as criminal law, civil law and labor law are governed by codes of law.
Law of Indonesia is based on a civil law system, intermixed with local customary law and Dutch law. Before the Dutch presence and colonization began in the sixteenth century, indigenous kingdoms ruled the archipelago independently with their own custom laws, known as adat. Foreign influences from India, China and the Middle East have not only affected culture, but also the customary adat laws. The people of Aceh in Sumatra, for instance, observe their own sharia law, while ethnic groups like the Toraja in Sulawesi still follow their animistic customary law.
The California Codes are 29 legal codes enacted by the California State Legislature, which, alongside uncodified acts, form the general statutory law of California. The official codes are maintained by the California Office of Legislative Counsel for the legislature. The Legislative Counsel also publishes the official text of the Codes publicly at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.
Laws against child sexual abuse vary by country based on the local definition of who a child is and what constitutes child sexual abuse. Most countries in the world employ some form of age of consent, with sexual contact with an underage person being criminally penalized. As the age of consent to sexual behaviour varies from country to country, so too do definitions of child sexual abuse. An adult's sexual intercourse with a minor below the legal age of consent may sometimes be referred to as statutory rape, based on the principle that any apparent consent by a minor could not be considered legal consent.
The judicial system of Bhutan is the purview of the Royal Court of Justice, the judicial branch of the government of Bhutan under the Constitution of 2008. The judicial system comprises the Judicial Commission, the courts, the police, the penal code, and regulations on jabmi (attorneys).
Common law offences are crimes under English criminal law, the related criminal law of some Commonwealth countries, and under some U.S. state laws. They are offences under the common law, developed entirely by the law courts, having no specific basis in statute.
Indonesia is a civil law country with five major codes. Its criminal procedure code, the Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Acara Pidana ("KUHAP"), determines the procedures and rights of individuals at different stages of the trial process.
The province of Aceh in Indonesia enforces some provisions of Islamic criminal law, the sole Indonesian province to do so. In Aceh, Islamic criminal law is called jinayat. The laws that implement it are called Qanun Jinayat or Hukum Jinayat, roughly meaning "Islamic criminal code". Although the largely-secular laws of Indonesia apply in Aceh, the provincial government passed additional regulations, some derived from Islamic criminal law, after Indonesia authorized the province to enact regional regulations and granted Aceh special autonomy to implement Islamic law. Offences under the provisions include alcohol consumption, production and distribution, gambling, adultery, rape, sexual harassment, certain intimacies outside marriage, and certain homosexual acts. Punishments include caning, fines, and imprisonment. There is no provision for stoning; an attempt to introduce it in 2009 was vetoed by Governor Irwandi Yusuf. In 2016 Aceh processed 324 first instance court cases under Islamic criminal law, and carried out at least 100 caning sentences.
Hukum Kanun Pahang, also known as Kanun Pahang or Undang-Undang Pahang was the Qanun or legal code of the old Pahang Sultanate. It contains significant provisions that reaffirmed the primacy of Malay adat, while at the same time accommodating and assimilating the Islamic law. The legal code was largely modelled on the Undang-Undang Melaka and Undang-Undang Laut Melaka, and was compiled during the reign of the 12th Sultan of Pahang, Abdul Ghafur Muhiuddin Shah. It is regarded as one of the oldest digest of laws compiled in the Malay world.
The Indonesian Criminal Code, commonly known in Indonesian as Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Pidana, abbreviated as KUH Pidana or KUHP), are laws and regulations that form the basis of criminal law in Indonesia. By deviating as necessary from Presidential Regulation dated 10 October 1945 No. 2, it stipulated that the criminal law regulations that are in effect are the Dutch criminal law regulations that existed on 8 March 1942. Currently, the Republic of Indonesia has its own Criminal Code, that is due to take effect in 2026.
