Criminal Justice Act (with its many variations) is a stock short title used for legislation in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Canada relating to the criminal law (including both substantive and procedural aspects of that law). It tends to be used for Acts that do not have a single cohesive subject matter.
The Bill for an Act with this short title will have been known as a Criminal Justice Bill during its passage through Parliament.
Criminal Justice Acts may be a generic name either for legislation bearing that short title or for all legislation which relates to the criminal law. It is not a term of art.
See also Criminal Law Act and Criminal Law Amendment Act.
Famous quotes containing the words criminal justice, criminal, justice and/or act:
“Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)
“The attorneys defending a criminal are rarely artists enough to turn the beautiful ghastliness of his deed to his advantage.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“of artists dying in childbirth, wise-women charred at the stake,
centuries of books unwritten piled behind these shelves;
and we still have to stare into the absence
of men who would not, women who could not, speak
to our life—this still unexcavated hole
called civilization, this act of translation, this half-world.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)