This week we studied damages, which are core to the legal system. One of the types of damages you learned about was punitive damages.

This week we studied damages, which are core to the legal system. One of the types of damages you learned about was punitive damages. As you learned, punitive damages are used by judges and juries when they feel that the conduct of a civil defendant (remember we are not studying criminal cases in this class) is particularly galling and deserves extra punishment. As you also learned, many other countries do not allow punitive damages and do not enforce other countries' punitive damages awards. They instead allow more aggressive criminal prosecution.Many individuals and businesses believe that the large awards created by punitive damages are inappropriate and serve only to make lawyers wealthy and encourage litigation (many disagree as well). Much of our culture perpetuates this idea by not properly understanding the differences between actual and punitive damages and thus misinterpreting the media's reports of large damage awards.What is the better course should punitive damages continue? Should we increase criminal penalties? Should we do both? Should plaintiffs be allowed to continue to keep the punitive damages? Should punitive damages instead be in the form of a mandatory charitable contribution (generally to a charity of the judge's choice, which is ironic)?

Criminal LawRunning Head: CRIMINAL LAW Criminal Law Criminal LawAnswerAccording to the law, punitive damages should continue. The main reason behindit is that punitive damages put off bad...