A defendant or defender is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally charged or accused of violating a criminal statute. In general use, a complaint is an expression of displeasure, such as poor service at a store, or from a local government, for example. ... A plaintiff, also known as a claimant or complainant, is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an action) before a court. ... A pursuer in Scotland is the party who initiates a lawsuit before a Court of Scotland. ... A lawsuit is a civil action brought before a court in order to recover a right, obtain damages for an injury, obtain an injunction to prevent an injury, or obtain a declaratory judgment to prevent future legal disputes. ... A court is an official, public forum which a sovereign establishes by lawful authority to adjudicate disputes, and to dispense civil, labour, administrative and criminal justice under the law. ... Charge is a word with many different meanings. ... A crime in a broad sense is an act that violates a political or moral law of any one person or social grouping. ... A statute is a formal, written law of a country or state, written and enacted by its legislative authority, perhaps to then be ratified by the highest executive in the government, and finally published. ...

A defendant in a civil action usually makes his or her first court appearance voluntarily in response to a summons, whereas a defendant in a Criminal law criminal case is usually taken into custody by police and brought before a court, pursuant to an arrest warrant. The actions of a defendant, and its lawyer counsel, is known as the defense defence.

A respondent is the parallel term used in a proceeding which is commenced by petition. Look up Petition in Wiktionary, the free dictionary A petition is a request to an authority, most commonly a government official or public entity. ...

Historically, a defendant in a civil action could also be taken into custody pursuant to a writ of capias ad respondendum and forced to post bail before being released from custody. However, a modern day defendant in a civil action is usually able to avoid most (if not all) court appearances if he or she is represented by a lawyer whereas a defendant in a criminal case (particularly a felony or indictment) is usually obliged to post bail before being released from custody and must be present at every stage thereafter of the proceedings against him or her. Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court in order to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail (skipping bail, or jumping bail, is also illegal). ... In the United States, a lawyer is a person licensed by the state to advise clients in legal matters and represent them in courts of law and in other forms of dispute resolution. ... A felony, in many common law legal systems, is the term for a very serious crime; misdemeanors are considered to be less serious. ... In the common law legal system, an indictment is a formal charge of having committed a serious criminal offence. ...

In an informal usage and non-legalistic sense outside the legal context, the term respondent can be used to refute or response to a thesis or an argument in question [1]. Look up Context on Wiktionary, the free dictionary See also ConTeXt, a macro package for the TeX typesetting system. ...

In cross-cultural communication , a respondent is the second person responding to the meaning or message from an original source which has been contextualised Contextualization or decoded for the understanding of respondents as recipients or hearers of the message occurring from a different cultural context. Cross-cultural communication (it is also frequently referred to as Intercultural communication) looks at how people, from differing cultural backgrounds, endeavour to communicate. ... In Common law, a defendant is any person who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff in a civil suit or any person who has been named in a criminal information or criminal complaint and stands accused of violating a criminal statute. ... Contextualization It is a big, long word first coined and used among linguists involved in communicating the translation of the Bible into relevant cultural settings. ...