Negligence In English Criminal Law

Originally, criminal law was not a distinct part of English law. It became its own field around the period where England was conquered by Normans in 1066. But at the time it was difficult to handle criminal cases since the law that was to deal with these cases was not yet established. The development of criminal law was greatly assisted by the creation of police force around the 18th century, since it could then be consistently enforced, which enabled it to develop in a creditable manner.
English tort law, on the other hand, found its origin in the Germanic legal system. At first it simply consisted of a set of possible fines that compensated harms that had been done. Trough time, a particular tort stood out, the one of negligence. This was

This intent for the said criminal act can be split into two other factors: actus reus and mens rea. The earlier is the Latin expression for “guilty act” which basically refers to the accomplishment of the prohibited act by a perpetrator. The second expression stands for “guilty mind”, which refers to the psychological aspect of the crime, or the calculation that was required by the criminal in order to perform his act and bring about the consequences that the act entailed, whether he wanted the result to take place or not. In order to find a defendant guilty, it must be proved that he has committed the act, but also that he intended for it to happen. To illustrate a criminal act, one could consider the case of R v Inglis dated from 2011, where a distressed mother injected her son with a lethal quantity of heroin after he suffered a serious accident that she believed, to the detriment of the doctor’s advice, would leave him in a vegetative state of suffering for the rest of his life

The party that initiates the actions aimed at resolving crimes is not a particular individual, it is the state. The state cannot, since its represents all the inhabitants of a considered country, physically be present to take action. So it is the role of an appointed prosecutor to represent it in trials. The form in which criminal law exists in England, is mostly in that of statutes. These statutes, along with acts are created by the English Parliament who is the supreme lawmaker in England, these statutes are binding to all English citizens. The criminal trial procedure in England is very complex and contains many steps that are defined precisely and aim at minimising the possibility of errors, but acknowledge the need for justice. And since a criminal conviction has very severe consequences on the fundamental rights of an individual, it requires a very strong basis of proof. The defendant must indeed be found guilty “beyond reasonable doubt”. All criminal cases that have been concluded bear this characteristic of absolute certainty of guilt, it is a standard of evidence that is almost always present in adversarial legal systems.
Besides the many differences between a tort and a crime, there are a series of similarities that must not be overlooked when comparing both areas of law. For example in some cases, both disciplines are used. Meaning that a legal action issued from the two disciplines