|
In criminal law, strict liability is liability where mens rea (Latin for "guilty mind") does not have to be proved in relation to one or more elements comprising the actus reus (Latin for "guilty act") although intention, recklessness or knowledge may be required in relation to other elements of the offence. The liability is said to be strict because defendants will be convicted even though they were genuinely ignorant of one or more factors that made their acts or omissions criminal. The defendants may therefore not be culpable in any real way, i.e. there is not even criminal negligence, the least blameworthy level of mens rea. Image File history File links SmallLadyJustice. ...
Criminal law (also known as penal law) is the body of law that punishes criminals for committing offences against the state. ...
This article concerns the common-law legal system, as contrasted with the civil law legal system; for other meanings of the term, within the field of law, see common law (disambiguation). ...
Actus reus is the action (or inaction, in the case of criminal negligence and similar crimes which are sometimes called acts of omission) which, in combination with the mens rea (guilty mind), produces criminal liability in common law based criminal law jurisdictions such as the United States, United Kingdom. ...
In law, causation is the name given to the process of testing whether defendants should be fixed with liability for the outcome to their acts and omissions that injure or cause loss to others. ...
Concurrence or Simultaneity is a legal term, from Western jurisprudence, referring to the simultaneous occurrence of actus reus (bad action) and mens rea (bad mind), which must be present for a crime to have occurred; except in crimes of strict liability. ...
The mens rea is the Latin term for guilty mind used in the criminal law. ...
In the criminal law, intention is one of the three general classes of mens rea necessary to constitute a conventional as opposed to strict liability crime. ...
In English criminal law, intention is one of the types of mens rea (Latin for guilty mind) that, when accompanied by an actus reus (Latin for guilty act) constitutes a crime. ...
In the criminal law, recklessness (sometimes also termed wilful blindness) is one of the three possible classes of mental state constituting mens rea (the Latin for guilty mind). To commit an offence of ordinary as opposed to strict liability, the prosecution must be able to prove both an actus reus...
Willful blindess is a term used in law to describe a situation in which an individual seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting himself in a position where he will be unaware of facts which would render him liable. ...
Criminal negligence, in the realm of criminal common law, is a legal term of art for a state of mind which is careless, inattentive, neglectful, willfully blind, or reckless; it is the mens rea part of a crime which, if occurring simultaneously with the actus reus, gives rise to criminal...
Ignorantia juris non excusat or Ignorantia legis neminem excusat (Latin for ignorance of the law is no excuse) is a legal doctrine holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape punishment for violating the law merely because they were unaware of the law; that is...
The legal principle of vicarious liability applies to hold one person liable for the actions of another when engaged in some form of joint or collective activity. ...
In the criminal law, corporate liability is an aspect of criminal vicarious liability and determines the extent to which a corporation as a fictitious person can be convicted of offences committed by the natural persons it employs. ...
A felony, in many common law legal systems, is the term for a very serious crime; misdemeanors are considered to be less serious. ...
In many common law jurisdictions (e. ...
A hybrid offence or dual offence are the special offences in Canadian criminal law where the prosecution may choose whether to proceed with a summary offence or an indictment. ...
A misdemeanors (or misdemeanour), in many common law legal systems, is a lesser criminal act. ...
A lesser included offense, in criminal law, is a crime for which all of the elements necessary to impose liability are also elements found in a more serious crime. ...
Regulatory offences are a class of crime in which the standard for proving culpability has been lowered so as not to require any fault elements. ...
In many common law jurisdictions, the crime of battery involves an injury or other contact upon the person of another in a manner likely to cause bodily harm. ...
Mayhem, under the common law of crimes, consisted of the intentional and wanton removal of a body part that would handicap a persons ability to defend themselves in combat. ...
In the United States, larceny is a common law crime involving stealing. ...
The Skyline Parkway Motel in Afton, Virginia after an arson fire on July 9, 2004. ...
False pretenses is a common law crime. ...
Extortion is a criminal offense, which occurs when a person obtains money, behaviour, or other goods and/or services from another by wrongfully threatening or inflicting harm to this person, reputation, or property. ...
Forgery is the process of making or adapting objects or documents (see false document), with the intention to deceive. ...
Computer Crime, E-Crime, Hi-Tech Crime or Electronic Crime is a crime in which a computer plays an essential part. ...
Bribery is a crime defined by Blacks Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions as an official or other person in discharge of a public or legal duty. ...
Perjury is lying or making verifiably false statements under oath in a court of law. ...
Obstruction of justice, in a common law state, refers to the crime of offering interference of any sort to the work of police, investigators, regulatory agencies, prosecutors, or other (usually government) officials. ...
Misprision of felony, under the common law of England, was the crime of failing to report knowledge of a felony to the appropriate authorities. ...
An inchoate offense is a crime. ...
Solicitation is a crime; it is an inchoate offense that consists of a person inciting, counseling, advising, urging, or commanding another to commit a crime with the specific intent that the person solicited commit the crime. ...
The crime of attempt occurs when a person does an act amounting to more than mere preparation for a criminal offense, with specific intent to commit a crime, if that act tends but fails to effect the commission of the offense intended. ...
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more natural persons to break the law at some time in the future, so a natural person identified with the mind of a legal entity cannot conspire with the company alone. ...
An accessory is a person who assists in or conceals a crime, but does not actually participate in the commission of the crime. ...
Criminal procedure refers to the legal process for adjudicating claims that someone has violated the criminal law. ...
A contract is any promise or set of promises made by one party to another for the breach of which the law provides a remedy. ...
In the common law, a tort is a civil wrong for which the law provides a remedy. ...
Property law is the law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property (land as distinct from personal or movable possessions) and in personal property, within the common law legal system. ...
In the law, a will or testament is a document by which a person (the testator) regulates the rights of others over his property or family after death. ...
The law of trusts and estates is generally considered the body of law which governs the management of personal affairs and the disposition of property of an individual in anticipation and the event of such persons incapacity or death, also known as the law of successions in civil law. ...
The law of evidence governs the use of testimony (eg. ...
Criminal law (also known as penal law) is the body of law that punishes criminals for committing offences against the state. ...
The mens rea is the Latin term for guilty mind used in the criminal law. ...
Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...
Actus reus is the action (or inaction, in the case of criminal negligence and similar crimes which are sometimes called acts of omission) which, in combination with the mens rea (guilty mind), produces criminal liability in common law based criminal law jurisdictions such as the United States, United Kingdom. ...
In the criminal law, intention is one of the three general classes of mens rea necessary to constitute a conventional as opposed to strict liability crime. ...
In the criminal law, recklessness (sometimes also termed wilful blindness) is one of the three possible classes of mental state constituting mens rea (the Latin for guilty mind). To commit an offence of ordinary as opposed to strict liability, the prosecution must be able to prove both an actus reus...
In the criminal law, an omission or failure to act will only constitute an actus reus (Latin for guilty act) and give rise to liability when the law imposes a duty to act and the defendant is in breach of that duty. ...
Culpability descends from the Latin concept of fault (culpa), which is still found today in the phrase mea culpa (literally, my fault). The concept of culpability is intimately tied up with notions of agency, freedom and free will. ...
Criminal negligence, in the realm of criminal common law, is a legal term of art for a state of mind which is careless, inattentive, neglectful, willfully blind, or reckless; it is the mens rea part of a crime which, if occurring simultaneously with the actus reus, gives rise to criminal...
It is used either used in regulatory offences enforcing social behaviour where minimal stigma attaches to a person upon conviction, or where society is concerned with the prevention of harm, and wishes to maximise the deterrent value of the offence. The imposition of strict liability may operate very unfairly in individual cases. For example, in Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain v Storkwain (1986) 2 AER 635, a pharmacist supplied drugs to a patient who presented a forged doctor's prescription, but was convicted even though the House of Lords accepted that the pharmacist was blameless. The justification is that the misuse of drugs is a grave social evil and pharmacists should be encouraged to take even unreasonable care to verify prescriptions before supplying drugs. Similarly, where liability is imputed or attributed to another through vicarious liability or corporate liability, the effect of that imputation may be strict liability albeit that, in some cases, the accused will have a mens rea imputed and so, in theory, will be as culpable as the actual wrongdoer. Regulatory offences are a class of crime in which the standard for proving culpability has been lowered so as not to require any fault elements. ...
This article is about the British House of Lords. ...
The principle of imputation reflects the general public policy underpinning the operation of the law which is that ignorantia juris non excusat, the Latin for ignorance of the law is no excuse. ...
Vicarious liability is a form of strict, secondary liability that arises under the common law doctrine of agency – respondeat superior – the responsibility of the superior for the acts of their subordinate and can be distinguished from contributory liability, another form of secondary liability, which is rooted in the tort theory...
In the criminal law, corporate liability is an aspect of criminal vicarious liability and determines the extent to which a corporation as a fictitious person can be convicted of offences committed by the natural persons it employs. ...
Discussion of English law Under the common law the rule is that crimes require proof of mens rea except in cases of public nuisance, criminal and blasphemous libel, and criminal contempt of court. Where the liability arises under a statute, there has been considerable inconsistency, with different rules of construction in statutory interpretation producing varying assessments of the will of Parliament. But, in Sweet v Parsley (1969) 1 AER 347, Lord Reid laid down the following guidelines for all cases where the offence is criminal as opposed to quasi-criminal: (a) Wherever a section is silent as to mens rea there is a presumption that, in order to give effect to the will of Parliament, words importing mens rea must be read into the provision. (b) It is a universal principle that if a penal provision is reasonably capable of two interpretations, that interpretation which is most favourable to the accused must be adopted. (c) The fact that other sections of the Act expressly require mens rea is not in itself sufficient to justify a decision that a section which is silent as to mens rea creates an absolute offence. It is necessary to go outside the Act and examine all relevant circumstances in order to establish that this must have been the intention of Parliament. Hence, the literal rule is qualified, and there is a rebuttable presumption that Parliament intended a mens rea to be a requirement in any section which creates an offence where the social stigma following conviction and the punishment available to be imposed show this to be a truly criminal offence. In Gammon v AG for Hong Kong (1985) AC 1, Lord Scarman rebutted the presumption because public safety was threatened. Hence, statutes involving pollution, dangerous dogs, and acting as a director while disqualified have been interpreted as imposing strict liability. In Environment Agency (formerly National Rivers Authority) v. Empress Car Co. (Abertillery) Ltd. (1998) 2 WLR. 350, examples are given of cases in which strict liability has been imposed for "causing" events which were the immediate consequence of the deliberate acts of third parties but which the defendant had a duty to prevent or take reasonable care to prevent. If words like "knowingly" or "wilfully" appear in the section, the inference is that Parliament intended a mens rea requirement in that section. But, if words implying a mens rea are present in some sections but not others, this suggests that Parliament deliberately excluded a mens rea requirement in those sections which are silent. In considering offences created in the Children Act 1960, Lord Hutton in B (a minor) v DPP (2000) 1 AER 833, states the current position at p855: This article concerns the common-law legal system, as contrasted with the civil law legal system; for other meanings of the term, within the field of law, see common law (disambiguation). ...
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. ...
Rules of construction or statutory construction is a phrase used to distinguish the rules of statutory interpretation from other rules or aids for the interpretation of law in the common law. ...
Statutory interpretation is the process of reading and applying statutory law. ...
The mens rea is the Latin term for guilty mind used in the criminal law. ...
// Literal rule (plain meaning) Meaning According to this rule, words must be given their plain, ordinary and literal meaning. ...
In law, a rebuttable presumption is an assumption that is made that will stand as a fact unless someone comes forward to contest it and prove otherwise. ...
Punishment is the practice of imposing something unpleasant on a wrongdoer as a response to something unwanted that the wrongdoer has done. ...
- the test is not whether it is a reasonable implication that the statute rules out mens rea as a constituent part of the crime — the test is whether it is a necessary implication.
As to the meaning of "necessary implication", Lord Nicholls said" - Necessary implication connotes an implication that is compellingly clear. Such an implication can be found in the language used, the nature of the offence, the mischief sought to be prevented and any other circumstances which may assist in determining what intention is properly to be attributed to Parliament when creating the offence. Necessary implication may arise from not only the statutory provision under review but also from the rules governing that provision to be deduced from other provisions.
Thus, the court must examine the overall purpose of the statute. If the intention is to introduce quasi-criminal offences, strict liability will be acceptable to give quick penalties to encourage future compliance, e.g. fixed-penalty parking offences. But, if the policy issues involved are sufficiently significant and the punishments more severe, the test must be whether reading in a mens rea requirement will defeat Parliament's intention in creating the particular offence, i.e. if defendants might escape liability too easily by pleading ignorance, this would not address the "mischief" that Parliament was attempting to remedy.
United States As a jurisdiction with due process, only the most minor crimes or infractions are subject to strict liability. One example would be parking violations, where the state only needs to show that the defendant's vehicle was parked inappropriately at a certain curb. But serious crimes like rape and murder require some showing of culpability or mens rea. Otherwise, every accidental death, even during medical treatment in good faith, could become grounds for a murder prosecution and a prison sentence. Due process of law is a legal concept that ensures the government will respect all of a persons legal rights instead of just some or most of those legal rights, when the government deprives a person of life, liberty, or property. ...
Infraction as a general term means a violation of a rule or local ordinance, regulation, promise, obligation, or contract. ...
Death is the cessation of physical life in a living organism or the state of the organism after that event. ...
Another area where strict liability tends to show up is in drunk driving laws; the punishment tends to be given on a strict liability basis, with no mens rea requirement at all. (This was important for the purposes of a U.S. Supreme Court case in 2004, Leocal v. Ashcroft, where a deportation order was overturned because the conviction that led to the deportation order was a strict liability law, while deportation was only allowed upon conviction if the crime was a "crime of violence" (a crime where violence, or the potential for it, was inherent in the crime itself).) Drunk driving (drink driving in the UK) or drinking and driving is the act of operating a motor vehicle after having consumed alcohol (i. ...
Violence refers to acts —typically connotative with aggressive and criminal behaviour —which intend to cause or is causing of injury to persons, animals, or (in limited cases) property. ...
References - Allen, Michael. Textbook on Criminal Law. Oxford University Press, Oxford. (2005) ISBN: 0199279187.
- Carson, W. G. Some Sociological Aspects of Strict Liability and the Enforcement of Factory Legislation (1970) 33 MLR 396.
- Glazebrook, P. R. How old did you think she was? (2001) Camb. LJ 26.
- Ormerod, David. Smith and Hogan Criminal Law, LexisNexis, London. (2005) ISBN: 0406977305
|
Feeds |
Contact