Skip to main content
criminal law

criminal law

30 3.4
Rules that say which acts are crimes and how people are punished
  • noun
  • /ˈkrɪmɪnəl lɔ/
  • Specialized
translation icon : derecho penal
  • Many law students specialize in criminal law to prepare for a career in defending clients against serious charges.
  • international criminal law
  • civil and criminal law
  • criminal law enforcement

Obviously innocence as proven by a court of criminal law and then not by a court of civil law later.

Autoplay Next

Examples

  • Her office was in Chicago, but she had a national practice in criminal law.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • There is actually significant debate as to the proper scope of victimhood in criminal law.

    Academic text (2017)
  • Federal criminal law is not related to common law.

  • The question is, when should the criminal law come in?

  • Now, would you please describe for us the changes in criminal law?

  • If it got around that I did that, what kind of criminal law practice do you think I'd have?

  • Many states addressed this concern for public virtue in their civil and criminal laws.

    Academic text (1990)
  • Let's just suppose for the sake of argument that the judge or the jury in criminal law aims at a verdict which is just.

  • Many American leaders feel estranged from recent developments in international humanitarian and criminal law.

    Academic text (2008)
  • Moreover, this approach would be consistent with traditional tort and criminal law principles.

    Academic text (2017)

Antonyms

civil law
  • Specialized
8 4.1

A system of law about private rights and disputes between people

How Governmental

constitutional
  • Formal
538 5.0
administrative law
  • Specialized
4 5.3
public law
  • Specialized
1 4.6
criminal law
  • Specialized
30 3.4

Surface Forms

criminal law singular
criminal laws plural

Morphology

criminal + law

The phrase 'criminal law' is a direct adjective+noun composition: 'criminal' (relating to crime) modifies 'law', so a learner who knows both constituents can infer it denotes laws concerning crime. This compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows standard English adjective-noun semantics, making it transparent to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Criminal law puts together criminal (a person who breaks rules) and law (the rules a community follows). Long ago, when someone harmed others, a town would use special rules to judge and punish them, so today criminal law means the set of rules about 'crime' and 'punishment'.