Mala in Se
Definition
An act treated as inherently wrong in itself, such as murder or rape, independent of whether a statute names it. The wrongness is taken to precede the law.
Related terms
- Criminalisation
- The formal process by which a legislature converts a previously lawful or merely deviant act into a criminal offence, typically by enacting...
- Legalistic Definition of Crime
- Sutherland's definition: crime is behaviour prohibited by the state as injurious to the state, punishable by law. It ties the concept of...
- Mala Prohibita
- An act that is wrong only because a statute prohibits it, such as jaywalking or unlicensed fishing. Remove the statute and the...
- Moral Panic
- A period of intense, media-driven public anxiety about a group or behaviour perceived as an exceptional threat to social order. Coined by...
- Social Construction of Crime
- The view that what counts as criminal is not fixed by nature but produced through social, political and historical processes, so the...