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Penalties are legal consequences for violating the law or court rules. In criminal law, they discourage criminal activity, while in civil law, they are used against attorneys or litigants who abuse the justice system. Penalties can include fines, prison sentences, community service, and license suspension. Bar associations can also impose penalties on their members.
Penalties are sanctions that are imposed by law when someone violates the law or court rules, or is believed to be behaving in a way that is contemptuous of the court. Curiously, the term “sanction” can also have the opposite meaning; rather than being a punishment meant to discourage an activity, it can be a form of approval indicating that an activity is acceptable. For example, if someone says “the law authorized his activities at the scene of the accident,” he might mean “the law authorized his activities at the scene of the accident”. Usually the intended meaning of this word is clear from the context.
In criminal law, penalties are intended to disincentivise criminal activity by providing clear consequences for engaging in criminal behavior. Examples of penalties can include prison sentences imposed for people convicted of engaging in certain activities, along with fines and other punishments such as community service that may be imposed by the court.
In civil law, penalties are most commonly used against attorneys or litigants when they abuse the justice system or act inappropriately. For example, attorneys and litigants can be fined for failing to observe decorum in court, filing frivolous actions, or acting contemptuously in court. These penalties can include fines and other penalties that the judge can set, and some judges have come up with particularly creative penalties to enforce order in their courtrooms.
Penalties in these cases can include things like fines paid to the other party to make up for lost time. For example, if an attorney does not have a witness ready at the appointed date and time, the judge may impose penalties which the attorney pays to the opposing counsel in recognition that his time was wasted by appearing in court when he was not a witness to listen to.
Bar associations can also impose penalties on their members. If a bar association believes that a lawyer has behaved unprofessionally, they can be fined. The license to practice the legal profession can be suspended temporarily, for a specific period, or permanently, for example, and the lawyers can also impose sanctions. Once an attorney has been sanctioned by the bar association, a note goes into the attorney’s permanent record and will appear when clients or other attorneys ask the bar for references and information about the attorney’s position with the order.
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