Violating a civil court order can result in prison time, and if you get convicted in civil court, the police will enforce that judgement, so seems like it has all three?
I agree one could maybe make some argument that it’s not “criminal justice” until you “commit a crime by violating a civil court order”, but that seems confused to me, especially when thinking about things like enforcement and discovery dynamics. The civil courts power is directly downstream of its ability to enforce its judgements using criminal punishments.
Also, separately, that article sure is very America-centric. For example Germany has one set of courts for both criminal and civil cases, IIRC.
I can’t comment on how things work in Germany, since they have a very different structure of law (that my guess is English-language terms are not well-designed for), but:
I agree one could maybe make some argument that it’s not “criminal justice” until you “commit a crime by violating a civil court order”
This is what I think—in particular, the “criminal justice system” is the system that involves dealing with crimes, and the “civil law system” is the system that involves dealing with civil wrongs. You’re correct that they relate, but there are enough distinctions (who brings cases, proof standards, typical punishments, source of the laws) that I think it makes sense to distinguish them. I further think that most people with enough context to know the difference between civil and criminal law would not guess that a similarly informed person would use the term “criminal justice system” to cover civil law.
I would not use the term “criminal justice” to describe civil law, since civil law deals with civil wrongs rather than crimes.
Relevant evidence from the Wikipedia page on Criminal justice:
Civil law lacks parts 1 and 3.
Violating a civil court order can result in prison time, and if you get convicted in civil court, the police will enforce that judgement, so seems like it has all three?
I agree one could maybe make some argument that it’s not “criminal justice” until you “commit a crime by violating a civil court order”, but that seems confused to me, especially when thinking about things like enforcement and discovery dynamics. The civil courts power is directly downstream of its ability to enforce its judgements using criminal punishments.
Also, separately, that article sure is very America-centric. For example Germany has one set of courts for both criminal and civil cases, IIRC.
I can’t comment on how things work in Germany, since they have a very different structure of law (that my guess is English-language terms are not well-designed for), but:
This is what I think—in particular, the “criminal justice system” is the system that involves dealing with crimes, and the “civil law system” is the system that involves dealing with civil wrongs. You’re correct that they relate, but there are enough distinctions (who brings cases, proof standards, typical punishments, source of the laws) that I think it makes sense to distinguish them. I further think that most people with enough context to know the difference between civil and criminal law would not guess that a similarly informed person would use the term “criminal justice system” to cover civil law.
Having spent two years in law school, I feel pretty confident that Daniel’s right about this.