Nulla poena sine lege (Latin for "no penalty without law", Anglicized pronunciation: 'nʌlə_'piːnə_'saɪniː_'liːdʒiː ) is a legal principle which states that one cannot be punished for doing something that is not prohibited by law. This principle is accepted and codified in modern democratic states as a basic requirement of the rule of law. It has been described as "one of the most 'widely held value-judgement[s] in the entire history of human thought.
In modern European criminal law, e.g. of the Constitutional Court of Germany, the principle of nulla poena sine lege has been found to consist of four separate requirements:
Nulla poena sine lege praevia There is to be no penalty without previous law. This prohibits ex post facto laws, and the retroactive application of criminal law. It is a basic maxim in mainland European legal thinking. It was written by Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach as part of the Bavarian Criminal Code in 1813.
Nulla poena sine lege scripta There is to be no penalty without written law. That is, criminal prohibitions must be set out in written legal instruments of general application, normally statutes, adopted in the form required by constitutional law. This excludes customary law as a basis of criminal punishment.
Nulla poena sine lege certa There is to be no penalty without well-defined law. This provides that a penal statute must define the punishable conduct and the penalty with sufficient definiteness. This to allow citizens to foresee when a specific action would be punishable, and to conduct themselves accordingly, a rule expressed in the general principle of legal certainty in matters of criminal law. It is recognised or codified in many national jurisdictions, as well as e.g. by the European Court of Justice as a "general principle of Union law".
Nulla poena sine lege stricta There is to be no penalty without exact law. This prohibits the application by analogy of statutory provisions in criminal law.
One complexity is the lawmaking power of judges under common law.
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An ex post facto law is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law. In criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed; it may aggravate a crime by bringing it into a more severe category than it was in when it was committed; it may change the punishment prescribed for a crime, as by adding new penalties or extending sentences; it may extend the Statute of limitations; or it may alter the rules of evidence in order to make conviction for a crime likelier than it would have been when the deed was committed.
vignette|Le Old Bailey à Londres (en 1808) où a eu lieu plus de procès criminels entre 1674 et 1834. Le droit pénal, ou droit criminel, est une branche du droit qui réprime des comportements antisociaux et prévoit la réaction de la société envers ces comportements. La réponse pénale prend le plus souvent la forme d'une peine. Le droit pénal concerne ainsi le rapport entre la société et l'individu.
vignette|La Loi par Jean-Jacques Feuchère. Marbre, 1852. Place du Palais-Bourbon, VIIe arrondissement de Paris. Le droit est défini comme , ou de façon plus complète . Ces règles, appelées règles de droit sont impersonnelles, abstraites, obligatoires et indiquent ce qui « doit être fait ». Ces règles juridiques peuvent trouver leur source dans une source normative « supérieure », extérieure, transcendante, comme le droit naturel, ou découler de normes intrinsèques, issues de la morale et de la raison.