CRIMINAL LAW, that branch of law which deals with crimes and their pun ishment and is in use in one shape or another wherever human society exists. The earliest form of penal law seems to have rested on a principle of private vengeance, and to have taken shape in the lex talionis, the law of retaliation formulated in the familiar passage in Exodus which lays down as a fit punish ment an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The severity of this doctrine was mitigated when the right of personal vengeance was satisfied by a money pay ment, a custom which can be traced in the early laws of the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, and which is particularly characteristic of early Teutonic systems of penal law. According to these a family is made pecuniarily responsible for the offenses of its members, or accepts a fine as a compensation for the life of a lost kinsman. When a man was killed, a part of this fine was paid to the king or head of the community to compensate the clan's loss of a fighting member; and in the distinction established between in juries done to the individual and injuries done to the community, the foundation of a system of criminal law was laid. The
sovereign power in a community or state took up the wrongs of private persons and exercised a right of public venge ance. Legislation upon this principle had for its object the intimidation of the wrongdoer, and was specially char acterized by the great variety and se verity of its punishments. It was not until the 18th century that a more en lightened jurisprudence prevailed. Bec caria's work, "On Crimes and Punish ments," published in 1764, has exercised a strong influence on criminal legislation by urging the claims of criminals to humane consideration, and examining the basis in morals upon which criminal law rests. The modern view gains ground that crime is to be looked upon as a dis ease of the social body, and that the remedy is to be looked for rather in im proved education and social well-being than in a repressive system of arbitrary punishments. The criminal law of a particular state is the body of legal rules affecting the commission and prosecution of crimes.