Legal Dictionary of Pakistan
Quick lookup for English, Urdu, and Latin legal terms used in Pakistani jurisprudence.
criminal law
The body of law defining offenses against the community at large, regulating how suspects are investigated, charged, and tried, and establishing punishments for convicted offenders. "The criminal law represents the pathology of civilization." Morris R. Cohen, Reason and Law 70 (1961). "Often the term 'criminal law' is used to include all that is involved in 'the administration of criminal justice' in the broadest sense. As so employed it embraces three different fields, known to the lawyer as (1) the substantive criminal law, (2) criminal procedure, and (3) special problems in the administration and enforcement of criminal justice .... The phrase 'criminal law' is more commonly used to include only that part of the general field known as the substantive criminal law ...." Rollin M. Perkins & Ronald N. Boyce, Criminal Law 1, 5 (3d ed. 1982).
criminal lawyer
A lawyer whose primary work is to represent criminal defendants. ( This term is rarely if ever applied to prosecutors despite their integral involvement in the criminal justice system.
horizontal-gaze nystagmus test. Criminal law.
A test for intoxication, commonly performed on persons suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol, in which the suspect's eyes are observed to detect involuntary jerking movements as they follow horizontal motion. -Abbr. HGN test. See NYSTAGMUS.
retreat rule. Criminal law
The doctrine holding that the victim of a murderous assault must choose a safe retreat instead of resorting to deadly force in self-defense, unless (1) the victim is at home or in his or her place of business (the so-called castle doctrine), or (2) the assailant is a person whom the victim is trying to arrest. 0 A minority of American jurisdictions have adopted this rule. Cf. NO-RETREAT RULE.