Seis conceptos en busca de un objetivo: jurisdicción, acción, proceso, derechos, pena y delito

Abstract

Criminal Law and Procedural Law are often seen as two separate universes. In fact, they are matters that were specialized only because it was hard for a single specialist to be a real expert on both. However, this specialization cannot produce a dissociation in their study. Both subjects should aim at a common end. But, which is this end? Knowing this end is important, above all, to be able to legislate properly, without falling into dogmatism or punitive populism. The article ends up concluding that both Criminal Law and Procedural Law very clearly search for a consensus on what society hates the most. This conclusion is demonstrated from the historical, theoretical and practical point of view. The legislator systematizes in a law, the Penal Code, what society more intensely rejects. The judge seeks the same goal through his judgment, and above all through its motivation, justifying this way the whole system.