Criminal law of the United States in the context of "United States Department of Justice Criminal Division"

In the United States, a state court is a court of law with jurisdiction over disputes with some connection to a U.S. state. State courts handle the overwhelming majority of civil and criminal cases in the United States; the United States federal courts are far smaller in terms of both personnel and caseload, and handle different types of cases. The number of cases filed in state courts each year surpasses the number of cases filed in federal courts by a factor of over two hundred. States often provide their trial courts with general jurisdiction (the hearing of all matters in which personal jurisdiction exists and which are not committed to another court) and state trial courts regularly have concurrent jurisdiction with federal courts. Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction and their subject-matter jurisdiction arises only under federal law.

Each state "is free to organize its courts as it sees fit," and consequently, "no two states have identical court structures." Generally, state courts are common law courts, and apply their respective state laws and procedures to decide cases. They are organized pursuant to and apply the law in accordance with their state's constitution, state statutes, and binding decisions of courts in their state court hierarchy. Where applicable, they also apply federal law, or need to make a choice of law from another jurisdiction.

In the United States, a federal crime or federal offense is an act that is made illegal by U.S. federal legislation enacted by both the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives and signed into law by the president. Prosecution happens at both the federal and the state levels (based on the Dual sovereignty doctrine) and so a "federal crime" is one that is prosecuted under federal criminal law and not under state criminal law under which most of the crimes committed in the United States are prosecuted.

That includes many acts for which, if they did not occur on U.S. federal property or on Indian reservations or were not specifically penalized, would either not be crimes or fall under state or local law. Some crimes are listed in Title 18 of the United States Code (the federal criminal and penal code), but others fall under other titles. For instance, tax evasion and possession of weapons banned by the National Firearms Act are criminalized in Title 26 of the United States Code.

The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 is a United States federal law that mandates certain practices in financial record keeping and reporting for corporations. The act, Pub. L. 107–204 (text) (PDF), 116 Stat. 745, enacted July 30, 2002, also known as the "Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act" (in the Senate) and "Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency Act" (in the House) and more commonly called Sarbanes–Oxley, SOX or Sarbox, contains eleven sections that place requirements on all American public company boards of directors and management and public accounting firms. A number of provisions of the Act also apply to privately held companies, such as the willful destruction of evidence to impede a federal investigation.

The law was enacted as a reaction to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals, including Enron and WorldCom. The sections of the bill cover responsibilities of a public corporation's board of directors, add criminal penalties for certain misconduct, and require the Securities and Exchange Commission to create regulations to define how public corporations are to comply with the law.

The United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division is a division of the U.S. Department of Justice that enforces U.S. antitrust law. It has exclusive jurisdiction over federal criminal antitrust prosecutions, and it shares jurisdiction over civil antitrust enforcement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The Division is headed by an assistant attorney general, who is appointed by the president of the United States with the advice and consent of the Senate, and who reports to the associate attorney general. The current assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division is Gail Slater.

In the law, the totality of the circumstances test refers to a method of analysis where decisions are based on all available information rather than bright-line rules. Under the totality of the circumstances test, courts focus "on all the circumstances of a particular case, rather than any one factor". In the United States, totality tests are used as a method of analysis in several different areas of the law. For example, in United States criminal law, a determination about reasonable suspicion or probable cause is based on a consideration of the totality of the circumstances.

The Model Penal Code (MPC) is a model act designed to stimulate and assist U.S. state legislatures to update and standardize the penal law of the United States. The MPC was a project of the American Law Institute (ALI), and was published in 1962 after a ten-year drafting period. The chief reporter on the project was Herbert Wechsler, and contributors included Sanford Kadish and numerous other noted criminal law scholars, prosecutors, and defense lawyers.

The ALI performed an examination of the penal system in the U.S. and the prohibitions, sanctions, excuses, and authority used throughout in order to arrive at a cohesive synthesis to the extent possible, and the best rules for the penal system in the United States. Primary responsibility for criminal law lies with the individual states, which over the years led to great inconsistency among the various state penal codes. The MPC was meant to be a comprehensive criminal code that would allow for similar laws to be passed in different jurisdictions.