Principles of criminal law

The purpose of criminal sanctions was to make the offender give retribution for harm done and expiate his moral guilt; punishment was to be meted out in proportion to the guilt of the accused. Writers of the Enlightenment such as Cesare Beccaria in Italy, Montesquieu and Voltaire in France, Jeremy Bentham in Britain considered the main purpose of criminal law to be the prevention of crime.

Tax law

Tax law is body of rules under which a public authority collect taxes has a claim on taxpayers, requiring them to transfer to the authority part of their income or property. The power to impose taxes is a right of government. The tax law of a nation is usually unique to it, although there are similarities and common elements in the laws of various countries.

In general, tax law is concerned only with the legal aspects of taxation. Not with its financial, economic, or other aspects.. kinds of taxes, the general level of taxation, and the rates of specific taxes, for example, , does not fall into the domain of tax law; it is a political, not a legal, process.

Tax law falls within the domain of public law – i.e., the rules that determine and limit the activities and reciprocal interests of the political community and the members composing it. Tax law can also be divided into material tax law, and formal tax law. The development of tax law as a comprehensive, general system is a recent phenomenon. The British system of income taxation is one of the oldest in the world, originated in the act of 1799 as a temporary means for meeting the increasing financial burden of the Napoleonic Wars. The limits to the right of the public authority to impose taxes are set by the power that is qualified to do so under constitutional law. In a democratic system this power is the legislature, not the executive or the judiciary.

Procedural law

Procedural law, also called ADJECTIVE LAW, is the law governing the machinery of the courts and the methods by which both the state and the individual (the latter including societies, whether incorporated or not) enforce their rights in the several courts. It prescribes the means of enforcing rights or providing redress of wrongs and practice, evidence, appeal, execution of judgments, representation of counsel, costs, conveyancing and registration, and other matters. Procedural law is commonly contrasted with substantive law, which constitutes the great body of law and regulates legal rights and duties.

Law of Contract

The law of contracts considers such questions as whether a contract exists; what the meaning of it is, whether a contract has been broken, and what compensation is due the injured party.

In the simplest definition, contract is a promise enforceable by law. The promise may be to do something or to refrain from doing something. The making of a contract requires the mutual assent of two or more persons, one of them ordinarily making an offer and another accepting. If one of the parties fails to keep the promise, the other is entitled to legal recourse.

Tort law

Tort – in common law, any instance of harmful behavior, from physical attack on one’s person to interference with one’s goods or use and enjoyment of one’s land, economic interests, and honour, reputation, and privacy. The concept encompasses only those civil wrongs independent of contracts.

Tort law is considered to have five purposes:

1. to compensate people for wrongs suffered;

2. to place the cost of that compensation upon those who, in justice, ought to bear it (an issue of fairness which is absent in the criminal law);

3. to prevent future losses and harms (deterrence);

4. to vindicate the one wronged;

5. to deter victims from having to make an individual retaliation for wrongs done.

Property law

Property law includes principles, policies, and rules by which disputes over property are to be resolved and by which property transactions may be structured so that disputes may be avoided. The things maybe tangible, such as land or a factory or a diamond ring, or they may be intangible, such as stocks and bonds or a bank account. Property law, then, deals with the allocation, use, and transfer of wealth and the objects of wealth. Since it deals with the control and transfer of wealth between spouses and across generations, property law reflects the family structure of the society in which it is found. Since it deals with such fundamental issues as the economy and the structure of the family, property law reflects the politics of the society in which it is found.

Labour law

Labour law is the varied body of law applied to such matters as employment, remuneration, conditions of work, trade unions, and industrial relations. Unlike the laws of contract, tort, or property, the elements of labour law are somewhat less homogeneous. Labour law deals with the statutory requirements and collective relationships that are important in mass-production societies, the legal relationships between organized economic interests and the state, and the various rights and obligations related to some types of social services. There is a labour code or other distinctive body of labour legislation in the country. A body of law originally intended for the protection of manual workers in industrial enterprises is gradually transformed into a broader body of legal principles and standards, which have basically two function: the protection of the worker as the weaker party in the employment relationship, and the regulation of the relations between organized interest group.

Elements of labour law

The basic subject matter of labour law can be considered under nine broad heads: employment; individual employment relationships; wages and remuneration; conditions of work; health, safety, and welfare; social security; trade unions and industrial relations; the administration of labour law; and special provisions for particular occupational or other groups.

Family law

According to Black’s Law Dictionary, family law is a branch or specialty of law, also denominated “domestic relations” law, concerned with such subjects as adoption, amendment, divorce, separation, paternity, custody, support and child care. Family law shares an interest in certain social issues with other areas of law (e.g., criminal law). One of the issues that has received a substantially increased amount of attention, from various points of view, is the very difficult problem of violence within the family.

At present the dominant form of the family group consists of two spouses and the children they have produced or adopted. The law, therefore, is concerned mainly with the rights and duties of husband and wife and parent and child. The family group based on concubinage has been largely neglected by the law because such unions are often transitory and difficult to define.

Two persons might produce the economic incidents of marriage by executing appropriate contracts or settlements. On this argument, a marriage provides a technically simple way of achieving things the parties could do for themselves in finance and property matters with greater expense and complexity.