welcome everybody to our studies in AQA alevel law this lesson is going to be looking at the the the first video on the first topic for a-level law which concerns the nature of law and the English legal system this lesson specifically is going to cover the distinction that we make within the English legal system between civil and criminal law now I want to just out out at the back out the gate first of all make it very very clear that when we are talking about law from this jurisdiction we are talking about the English legal system we are talking about law that exists in England and Wales now the reason why it's important is because when people make things references to things like the UK's legal system they're actually not really accurately presenting what the law looks like because while law that is passed in Parliament and and while there are things that relate to the the the Constitution that are more uh expansive across the United Kingdom the legal system that we are focusing on in this series is the English legal system and so that does not include for example Scots law which is completely different to that of the English legal system so there's no such thing for example as the UK criminal law there is only the English criminal law and then you have Criminal law within the Scots tradition as well so just bear that in mind when you're thinking about it it will it clearly shows a a very uh a very uh important point of of knowledge and competence in this area if you are writing the UK's criminal law rather than the English criminal law just just bear that in mind so as I've mentioned this lesson is going to explore the distinction between the civil law and the criminal law within the Eng English legal system and we're going to begin by talking about what the civil law is and fundamentally the civil law is a very broad very all-encompassing area of the law that deals specifically with disputes between individuals disputes between organizations disputes between individuals and organizations okay the primary purpose of the civil law is to resolve disputes and to provide remedies for an agre red party this usually exists in the form of some kind of specific performance of of an obligation or through the form of compensation this is the primary purpose of the civil law tradition common law common civil law cases include things like for example contract disputes for example property disputes for example family law disputes so things like divorce or or or child custody it also includes talk claims taught being an area of the law that concerns uh wrongful acts for which civil liability is Con is incurred so things like negligence or if you were to defame somebody if I was to if I was to say a lie about somebody publicly that would damage their reputation uh knowing that it is uh untrue then I have defamed that person I've either lied or slandered that person the distinction between liable and slander is the distinction between the medium on in which this uh this information is disseminated so if I speak it it is slander if it is if it is published in some kind of way then it becomes lious so this is what the civil law is and actually you will spend most of your time in this uh a-level course looking at civil law areas so if you take the full a level for a level law you will study the English legal system that we're doing here but you will also study the criminal law which we're going to look at in a second you will study taught and you will study contracts two of which these two are being the civil law based uh civil law-based uh uh areas of legal disputes and then finally you'll do human rights which is kind of an international and constitutional question uh constitutional law uh matter by contrast then the criminal law is a little bit different because the criminal law is concerned with offenses which are which are are which are uh which are levied against uh by the state or society as a whole the purpose of the criminal law therefore is to maintain public order to maintain safety and to also punish individuals who commit crimes when we look at a criminal law dispute such as theft such as assault or such as murder there isn't a situation where you have two private citizens except for in rare circumstances in two where there are two private citizens who are disputing over a criminal matter what tends to happen is a private citizen will commit an offense they will break the law by committing a crime and what happens is the state usually represented by the crown prosecution service will step in and they will act as uh they will they will act as uh the the uh the the prosecutors of a criminal uh a criminal offense what this then does is reduce the victim of a of a crime not to a party to a dispute but rather to a a a a witness or or or an evidentiary uh tool in the criminal process so if we were talking about negligence for example in the law of thought the victim of a of a negligence case the the person who is AG grieved by by the negligence case um is the person who actually makes a claim is a claimant in that case and the dispute is between the defendant the person who is alleged to have done this negligent Act and the claimant the person who has suffered as a result of the negligent act If instead of we're talking about thought we're talking about crime we talk about a criminal offense like theft the victim of theft is not a claimant in the case the victim of theft is reduced mely to that of if at most a witness in an evidentiary proceeding because who could step in to actually resolve and to actually prosecute a crime is the state not the individual private person there are there are private prosecutions that that do take place in certain circumstances which we'll get to as time goes on um but generally speaking this is how it works and this speaks to the parties involved in civil cases as noted the parties involved are the claimant or the plaintiff who will bring the case and the defendant the person who has uh has caused some harm they've breached a legal Duty for example if we're talking about the law of contracts maybe they have breached their contractual obligations uh the things that they were supposed to do in the contract Itself by contrast when we look at criminal cases uh the state which is represented usually by the CPS the crown prosecution service in England and Wales brings the case against the defendant the the case is usually prosecuted by uh the government the state in this regards um being the prosecutor uh and the accused being the defendant now be careful when we think about who actually prosecutes criminal cases because I've written here uh the cases prosecuted by the government but it should be noted that this is more representative of the the state okay the crown prosecution service I is technically part of the overall government structure of of the United Kingdoms uh or at least uh the the the government in England and Wales but it should be noted that the government for example for so like the labor government that we have right now aren't the people who are Prosecuting uh Prosecuting cases there isn't any politics involved in the crown prosecution service it is only legal it's obviously very important that there is even though the crown prosecution service is funded by the state and is sort of an offshoot of the of the overall broad um structure that we would probably call the government that the government doesn't interfere necessarily with the uh with who gets to be prosecuted by the CPS interestingly the Prime Minister that we have currently was at one time a uh Chief prosecutor the chief prosecutor for uh the crown prosecution Service aama uh acted as the Director of public prosecutions um so uh played a particularly strong legal role in that in that regard another key distinction that we can Levy between the civil law and the criminal law concerns the distinction between procedure and burdens so in civil cases um they are typically heard by County courts or the high court depending on the complexity and the value of a case so a very famous case in defamation that takes place in the late 1990s concerned the uh historian and author Deborah Lipa she had written a book about Holocaust denial and she had accused a number of people of being Holocaust deniers including a a a British historian by the name of David Irving he then sued her in the high court for defamation and lost um which was uh which is a very um it's at least a very historically important case if not necessarily too important when it comes to the legal implications of it the the only reason why um the only reason why that came to mind by the way as a as a famous case that was in the high court is because uh I've just finished reading the book that got Deborah lipat into trouble itself the book's called denying the Holocaust the growing assault on truth and memory uh for those of you who want to read that book it's it's a very very good book um so uh and it probably was made a lot more famous and a lot more popular by David owing himself the procedure when it comes to civil cases are slightly less formal than criminal trials um they can often be uh resolved with without a full trial through settlement or mediation uh and in fact most disputes don't even go to trial because of course that would be a significant um a significant burden on the state if they had to fund and they had to find uh judges and they had to find juries and they had to find all of the different uh different procedures in place for complicated civil cases in fact there is a uh if you go to the government website there is a pre-trial protocol procedure which basically says here that that the parties have to essentially dis uh they have to essentially exhaust all other options um which are available to them in civil cases before they take this to court and there are a number of options that um are Levy get that they can that they can Levy and we will talk about some of those in future lessons time criminal cases are often um distinguished between magistrates Court uh where we look at uh summary offenses or sometimes just sort of less serious offenses and then the more serious offenses are often um disputed in Crown CT often known as indictable offenses again this is something that we've covered already when we look at the criminal law more generally there is a more uh formal procedure in in criminal trials including a jury especially when it comes to Crown Court cases uh again we will look at this in more detail when we look at the criminal justice system uh generally speaking the parties in several cases could actually decide if they do go to court uh whether or not among them they choose to have a single judge uh operating and and thinking about the case rather than a single rather than a jury uh when criminal trials you can't just have a single judge uh as for indictable offenses at least uh so a jury will be will be uh presiding over those uh cases the burden of proof when it comes to civil cases is on the balance of probabilities so if there is a dispute that is had the burden of proof for the claimants to essentially uh win is whether or not on balance of probabilities the individuals in question have actually uh been negligent or have breach contract or whatever that particular whatever that particular civil dispute is um so it's a quite a significantly lower burden than um than than than when it comes to criminal cases which is more aptly defined as Beyond a reasonable a doubt um this is a much higher standard and so when it comes to criminal cases the prosecution has to defend um the uh the has to defend sorry has to prove the defendant's guilt to the point where there is not really a reasonable doubt about their guilt such that a jury wouldn't have a reasonable doubt uh answer therefore would prosecute and convict