The term criminal law, sometimes called penal law, refers to any of various bodies of rules in different jurisdictions whose common characteristic is the potential for unique and often severe impositions as punishment for failure to comply. Criminal punishment, depending on the offense and jurisdiction, may include execution, loss of liberty, government supervision (parole or probation), or fines. There are some archetypal crimes, like murder, but the acts that are forbidden are not wholly consistent between different criminal codes, and even within a particular code lines may be blurred as civil infractions may give rise also to criminal consequences. Criminal law typically is enforced by the government, unlike the civil law, which may be enforced by private parties.

The first civilizations generally did not distinguish between civil and criminal law. The first written codes of law were produced by the Sumerians. Another important early code was the Code Hammurabi, which formed the core of Babylonian law. These early legal codes did not separate penal and civil laws.

Breach of such laws created an obligation of law or vinculum juris discharged by payment of monetary compensation or damages. The first signs of the modern distinction between crimes and civil matters emerged during the Norman Invasion of England

The development of the state dispensing justice in a court clearly emerged in the eighteenth century when European countries began maintaining police services. From this point, criminal law had formalized the mechanisms for enforcement, which allowed for its development as a discernible entity.

International criminal law is an autonomous branch of law which deals with international crimes and the courts and tribunals set up to adjudicate cases in which persons have incurred international criminal responsibility Some precedents in international criminal law can be found in the time before the First World War. However, it was only after the war that a truly international criminal tribunal was envisaged to try perpetrators of crimes committed in this period.

After the Second World War, the Allied powers set up an international tribunal to try not only war crimes, but crimes against humanity committed under the Nazi regime. The Nuremberg Tribunal held its first session on 20 November 1945 and pronounced judgments on 30 September / 1 October 1946. The ICC issued its first arrest warrants in 2005.

Many laws are enforced by threat of criminal punishment, and their particulars may vary widely from place to place. The entire universe of criminal law is too vast to intelligently catalog. Nevertheless, the following are some of the more known aspects of the criminal law.

Elements
An element of a crime (collectively called elements of crime) is a basic set of common law principles regarding criminal liability that, with few exceptions, constitute the essential elements to prove that the defendant committed a crime under United States law. The component parts that make up any particular crime vary depending on the crime. The criminal law generally prohibits undesirable acts.

Actus reus
Actus reus is Latin for "guilty act" and is the physical element of committing a crime. It may be accomplished by an action, by threat of action, or exceptionally, by an omission to act. An actus reus may be nullified by an absence of causation. Causation is not broken simply because a victim is particularly vulnerable. This is known as the thin skull rule.

Mens rea
Mens rea is another Latin phrase, meaning "guilty mind." A guilty mind means an intention to commit some wrongful act. A lower threshold of mens rea is satisfied when a defendant recognises an act is dangerous but decides to commit it anyway. for instance, that if a man intends to strike a person with his belt, but the belt bounces off and hits another, mens rea is transferred from the intended target to the person who actually was struck.

Strict liability
Strict liability can be described as a "but for" cause of harm on part of the defendant. Not all crimes require bad intent, and alternatively, the threshold of culpability required may be reduced. For example, it might be sufficient to show that a defendant acted negligently, rather than intentionally or recklessly. In offenses of absolute liability, other than the prohibited act, it may not be necessary to show anything at all.

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Fatal offenses, Personal offenses, Property offenses, Participatory offenses and Defenses are some other more known aspects of criminal law.

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