Relations of Criminal Law

Relations of Criminal Law with Other Branches of Law

• Criminal law is connected to most branches of law and protects the rights established therein.
• Criminal law intersects with constitutional law to protect rights guaranteed by the constitution, like the right to life, personal freedom, sanctity of home, defense before the judiciary, and the state's right to protect its constitution and institutions.
• Criminal law intersects with administrative law through mandatory rules that aim to protect public office from bribery, corruption, and negligence, to protect employees from citizen assault, and to protect public funds from embezzlement.
• Criminal law intersects with personal status law to protect marital rights by penalizing adultery, failure to pay alimony, and failure to hand over a child to the rightful custodian.

Criminal Law and Other Criminal Sciences

• Criminal law is a branch of criminal sciences, which include criminal policy science, criminology, penology, criminal investigation, and forensic medicine.

Criminal Policy Science

• Criminal policy is the general plan set by the state in a specific country and historical period to combat crime.
• Criminal policy identifies forms of criminal behavior, organizes social reactions to this behavior by imposing penalties or measures, and sets rules for appropriate criminal procedures in prosecution, investigation, trial, and judgment execution.
• To devise and achieve its goals, criminal policy must identify the causes of crime and critically study existing criminal law for its suitability to the prevailing ideology and the requirements of combating crime.

Criminology

• Criminology is the study of the phenomenon of crime to identify its causes and determine methods of treatment.
• Criminology examines crime as a social fact, studying how individuals deviate from community rules and the social conditions surrounding the crime.
• Criminology seeks the causes of crime, whether biological, psychological, political, social, or economic, to understand and explain criminal behavior.
• Criminology focuses on treating criminal behavior through preventive measures and curative steps aimed at reforming criminals.
• Criminology is a synthetic science related to numerous other fields like life sciences and psychiatry, using their methodologies.

Branches of Criminology

• Some scholars divide criminology into three branches: criminal anthropology, criminal sociology, and criminal psychology

Criminal Anthropology

• Criminal anthropology studies the criminal's organic and psychological makeup to find the causes of crime.

Criminal Sociology

• Criminal sociology studies crime as a social phenomenon, investigating its causes through the political, social, and economic conditions surrounding the criminal.

Criminal Psychology

• Criminal psychology studies the criminal's mental capacities, thoughts, feelings, and emotions to find the causes of crime.

Penology

• Penology is the study of penalties and measures enforced on criminals.
• Penology is sometimes called "the science of treating offenders".
• Penology not only looks at the current situation but also what it should be.
• The current trend in some countries considers penology a part of criminology, as it deals with finding causes of crime and ways to treat criminal behavior.

Criminal Investigation

• Criminal investigation is the study of scientific means and their application in detecting crime and criminals, divided into scientific and practical branches.
• Scientific criminal investigation studies the means with a scientific nature to detect the crime and criminals, such as using chemical substances in analyzing criminal materials, and using special instruments to examine fingerprints, weapons and explosives.
• Practical criminal investigation studies the practical means used for detection, such as questioning suspects, hearing witnesses, and tracking criminals to identify and apprehend them.

Forensic Medicine

• Forensic medicine is the set of medical knowledge used by the judiciary to solve issues related to organic phenomena and effects resulting from the criminal act.
• Forensic medicine investigates the cause of death, the effects of an act on the victim's body, distinguishing marks to identify the body, the age of the perpetrator and the victim.
• Forensic medicine analyzes lines to reveal the personality of the accused and analyze materials related to the crime which help the court to know its nature.

Criminal Law and Ethics

• Legal rules often align with ethical rules, but law remains independent of ethics because moral and legal justifications for criminality differ.
• Legal justifications in positive laws stem from expediency considerations dictated by the state's criminal policy, even if they contradict moral rules.

Differences Between Law and Ethics

• Law does not punish many actions conflicting with ethical principles, unless individual or social harm results.
• Law penalizes actions unrelated to ethics due to social welfare requirements.
• Ethical rules are neither fixed nor stable, varying across societies, times, and individuals, which conflicts with the stability required of legal rules.
• Ethics cover a broader scope than law, judging actions like lying, hatred, envy, and backbiting, while law only punishes these if they cause significant harm.
• Ethics extend to intentions and hidden thoughts, while law only punishes manifest, tangible acts that disrupt society's security and order.
• Violating the law results in tangible punishment by public authority, while violating ethics leads only to a guilty conscience and public disapproval.

Criminal Law and Religion

• Religion is one of the oldest sources of criminal law, providing it with prohibited actions and punishments.
• Religious figures were often the ones judging the accused, and periods in history existed where actions were deemed crimes only if they contradicted religious teachings.
• After religion separated from the state, legislation began focusing on the state's and society's interests, regardless of religious law.
• The scope of what is criminalized in positive law does not necessarily align with religious law. A considerable part of the law remains in agreement with religious rules, especially in major crimes like murder, abortion, and theft. However, there is a part which doesn't agree with the religious rules like not punishing drinking alcohol, eating blood, dead animals and pork.
• Despite its separation from religion, positive criminal law protects religions and guarantees the freedom to practice their rituals.
• Article 43 of the Penal Code prohibits carrying out the death penalty on Fridays, Sundays, and religious holidays.

Differences Between Law and Religion

• The subject scope of each: religion regulates the relationship of a person with himself and with others, and regulates a person's relationship with his creator. Law does not regulate relationships of the person with himself, nor his relationship with his god as long as he does not do a tangible act that violates the law.
• Punishment is the most important difference, where breaking the law you will be punished by the public authority, and breaking any of Religious rulings can be applied in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for example, but in the rest of the countries that do not recognize Religion there will be a penalty in this world (may or may not happen) and a recompense in the afterlife.
• Whether everything that's prohibited by Religion is also prohibited by Law: it's not always the case, there are mutual matters such as forbidding murder and theft, but on the other hand there are offences that Religion prohibits, but that Law does not penalize (such as giving or taking loans with high interest, drinking alcohol, fornication among singles).