So for exemple if someone got on with a minor at the past, or if someone was openly racist in the 50s, would they be jailed now if they were alive, or do laws apply to the time you commited the crime?
In: Other
No.
Most legal system around the world today are set up so there can’t be no laws that punish people for things they did from before the law took effect.
In the US for example it is part of the US Constitution (Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 ):
>No Bill of attainder or Ex post facto law shall be passed.
Ex post facto is the technical name for that. The framers of the US constitution saw it necessary to put it all the way up there, because the English law at the time had no such prohibitions and they considered it an injustice they needed to move away from.
Many other countries have similar rules in their constitution or elsewhere in their legal framework.
It is almost universally recognized that making something retroactively illegal is unjust.
However sometimes it is still necessary. For example the Nuremberg trials that punished the surviving Nazi leadership came very close to creating such laws, as much of what the Nazis had done had been legal by the laws the Nazis had made at the time, but that was seen as necessary at the time.
It is unlikely we will see anything like this again unless something else comes up that is monstrous enough to have everyone agree that it should be punished, but not illegal at the time.
Latest Answers