CRIMINAL LAW. That branch of juris prudence which treats of crimes and offences.
From the very nature of the social com pact on which all municipal law is founded, and in consequence of which every man, when he enters into society, gives up part of his natural liberty, result those laws Which, in certain cases, authorize the inflic tion of penalties the privation of liberty and even the destruction of life with a view to the future prevention of crime and to insur ing the safety and wellfbeing of the public. Salta populi supreme Lew.
The extreme importance of a knowledge of the criminal law is evident. For a mis take in point of law, which every person of discretion not only may know but is bound and presumed ,to know, is in criminal cases no defence. Ignorantia eorum quw quis scire tenetur non excusat. This law is ad ministered upon the principle that every one must be taken conclusively to know it with out proof that he does know it; per Tindal, C. J., in 10 Cl. & F. 210. See U. S. v. An thony, 11 Blatchf. 200, Fed. Gas. No. 14,459; Hoover v. State, 59 Ala. 57; State v. Good enow, 65 Me. 30; State v. Halsted, 39 N. J. L. 402. And this is true though the statute making an act illegal is of so recent pro mulgation as to make it impossible to know of its existence; Branch Bank at Mobile v. Murphy, 8 Ala. 119; Heard v. Heard, 8 Ga. 380; The Ann, 1 Gall. C. C. 62, Fed. Cas. No. 397. This doctrine has been carried so far as to include the case of a foreigner charged with a crime which was no offence in his own country; 7 C. & P. 456; Russ. & R. 4. See Sumner v. Beeler, 50 Ind. 341, 19 Am. Rep. 718. And, further, the criminal law, whether common or statute, is imperative with reference to the conduct of individuals; so that, if a statute forbids or commands a thing to be done, all acts or omissions con trary to the prohibition or command of the statute are offences at common law, and or dinarily indictable as such; Hawk. P1. Cr. bk. 2, c. 25, § 4; S Q. B. 883. An offence which may be the subject of criminal pro cedure is an act committed or omitted in violation of a public law either forbidding or commanding it; U. S. v. Eaton, 144 U. S.
677, 12 Sup. Ct. 764, 36 L. Ed. 591.
In seeking for the sources of our law up on this subject, when a statute punishes a crime by its legal designation, without enu merating the acts which constitute it, then it is necessary to resort to the common law for a definition of the crime with its dis tinctions and qualifications. So if an act is made criminal, but no mode of prosecution is directed or no punishment provided, the common law furnishes its aid, prescribing the mode of prosecution by indictment, and as a mode of punishment, fine, and imprison ment. This is generally designated the com mon law of England; but it might now be properly called the common law of this coun try. It was adopted by general consent when our ancestors first settled here. So far, therefore, as the rules and principles of the common law are applicable to the adminis tration of criminal law and have not been altered and modified by legislative enact ments or judicial decisions, they have the same force and effect as laws formally enact ed; Tully v. Corn., 4 Mete. (Mass.) 358; Corn. v. Chapman, 13 Mete. (Mass.) 69. "The common law of crimes is at present that jus vagum et incognitum against which jurists and vindicators of freedom have strenuously protested. It is to be observed that the definitions of crimes, the nature of punishments, and the forms of criminal pro cedure originated, for the most part, in the principles of the most ancient common law, but that most of the unwritten rules touch ing crimes have been modified by statutes which assume the common-law terms and definitions as if theft import were familiar to the community._ The common law of crimes has, partly from humane and partly from corrupt motives, been pre-eminently the sport of judicial constructions. In theory, indeed, it was made for the state of things that prevailed in this island and the kind of people that inhabited it in the reign of Richard I.; in reality, it is the patchwork of every judge in every reign, from Cceur de Lion to Victoria." Ruins of Time Ex emplified in Hale's Pleas of the Crown, by Amos, Pref. x.