2) read the following words and define their part of speech:

apprehension, suspected, regulate, trial, applicable, morally, retribution, offender, rationalistic, nature, rehabilitation, social, deter, deterrence, strengthening, consistently, statutory, legislation, codification, reference, specify.

 Read Text A and answer the following questions:

6. What is Criminal law?

7. What were and are the main purposes of Criminal law?

8. What are the peculiar features of the Criminal law of most English-speaking countries?

CRIMINAL LAW

Criminal law is the body of law that defines criminal offenses, regulates the apprehension, charging, and trial of suspected persons, and fixes penalties and modes of treatment applicable to convicted offenders.

The traditional approach to criminal law has been that crime is an act that is morally wrong. 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. In modern times more rationalistic and pragmatic views have predominated. Writers of the Enlightenment considered the main purpose of criminal law to be the prevention of crime. With the development of the social sciences, there arose new concepts, such as those of the protection of the public and the reform of the offender. Such a purpose can be seen in the West German criminal code of 1975, which provides that the court «has to consider the consequences of the sentence upon the future life of the offender in society». In the United States, a Model Penal Code proposed by the American Law Institute in 1962 states that an objective of criminal law should be «to give fair warning of the nature of the conduct declared to constitute an offense» and «to promote the correction and rehabilitation of offenders». Since that time there has been renewed interest in the concept of general prevention, including both the deterrence of possible offenders and the stabilization and strengthening of social norms.

Important differences exist between the criminal law of most English-speaking countries and that of other countries. The criminal law of England and the United States derives from the traditional English common law of crimes and has its origins in the judicial decisions embodied in reports of decided cases, England has consistently rejected all efforts toward comprehensive legislative codification of its criminal law; even now there is no statutory definition of murder in English law. Some Commonwealth countries, however, notably India, have enacted criminal codes that are based on the English common law of crimes.

The criminal law of the United States, derived from the English common law, has been adapted in some respects to American conditions. In the majority of the U.S. states the common law of crimes has been repealed by legislation. The effect of such statutes is that no person may be tried for any offense that is not specified in the statutory law of the state. But even in these states the common-law principles continue to exert influence, for the criminal statutes are often simply codifications of the common law, and their provisions are interpreted by reference to the common law. In the remaining states, prosecutions for common-law offenses not specified in statutes do sometimes occur.

TASKS

Task 1 . Read the following words and word combinations and give their Russian equivalents:

criminal law, suspected persons, social sciences, to fix penalties, convicted offenders, moral guilt, consequences of the sentence, existing differences, deterrence of possible offenders, judicial decisions, the nature of the conduct, comprehensive legislative codification, statutory definition, criminal codes, to occur.

Task 2 . Read the following words and word combinations and give their English equivalents:

оказывать влияние, искупать вину, уголовно-исполнительный кодекс, указывать (устанавливать) правонарушения, толковать положения, обращение к (ссылка на) общее право, судить человека за правонарушение, отменить закон, убийство, предотвращать преступления, уголовные правонарушения, способы воздействия, цели уголовных санкций, вина обвиняемого, защита общества, жизнь преступника в обществе, способствовать исправлению преступника.