Criminal law and criminal procedure
Criminal law deals with the legal rules on criminal offences and punishment.
Overview of the subject area
Criminal law is often divided into two parts: general and specialized. The general part describes the rules that are common to most criminal offences, including the conditions for imposing punishment (criminal liability studies), the sanctions imposed on the guilty person (sanctions studies) and the execution of sanctions (execution of sanctions studies). Specialized criminal law addresses the individual penal provisions that apply to the individual criminal offence (criminal offences studies).
Criminal procedure focuses on the legal rules on how criminal offences are to be investigated and how penal cases must be dealt with in the legal system.