Immunity, also known as transactional immunity, confers a status on a person or body that places them beyond the law and makes that person or body free from otherwise legal obligations such as, for example, liability for torts or damages or prosecution under criminal law for criminal acts.
There are numerous forms of immunity, as listed below. Each has a separate article explaining it in more detail.
Forms of immunity
Amnesty law is legislation affording immunity for past crimes.
Judicial immunity, which derives from sovereign immunity, is the absolute immunity of a judge or magistrate from any kind of civil liability for an act performed in the judge's official capacity. Hence, while sitting on the bench the judge cannot be sued for defamation if he or she makes a statement about one of the parties before the court that might otherwise be considered slander.
Prosecutorial immunity occurs when a prosecutor grants immunity to a witness in exchange for testimony. It is immunity because the prosecutor essentially agrees to never prosecute the crime that the witness might have committed in exchange for that testimony. It is commonly known as "King/Queen's evidence" or "State's evidence."
Civil immunity is immunity from specific or unspecified civil lawsuits. Though general in its basic definition, it is often specifically applied to persons against whom a crime was committed or attempted, protecting such persons from civil suit for damages to the criminal actor suffered during the crime or attempted crime. This is often invoked, as intended, in cases of self-defense.
Parliamentary immunity is granted to elected representative officials during their tenure in their legislature for their official acts undertaken by them. Such immunity is seen to be a means to the free discussion of ideas by preventing malicious prosecution by political opponents or the government itself, although when it is abused there may be ways to surmount such immunity; this was invoked in the case of Jürgen Möllemann.
Diplomatic immunity, an agreed policy between sovereign governments, ensures that diplomats are given safe passage and are considered not susceptible to lawsuit or prosecution under the host country's laws (although they can be expelled or declared unwanted).
Sovereign immunity holds that a sovereign is superior to all in authority and power. It prevents, in advance, a suit or prosecution against a sovereign, being a monarch, ruler, or government, without the sovereign's consent.
Qualified immunity, in the United States, grants immunity to individuals performing tasks as part of the government. Certain individuals are immune from lawsuits when "insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." [1]. Certain individuals who are not government employees may have qualified immunity if they are considered a "state actor".
Encyclopedia
top
