Short answers, pulled from the story.
Criminal law proscribes conduct that threatens or harms people's health, safety, and welfare, and focuses on punishment and rehabilitation of offenders. Civil law emphasizes dispute resolution and victim compensation rather than punishment.
The five widely accepted objectives are retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and restoration. Jurisdictions differ on how much weight to assign each goal.
An early code of Urukagina of Lagash, dating to approximately 2380-2360 BC, is among the oldest known. The Code of Ur-Nammu, enacted by the Neo-Sumerian king of Ur around 2100-2050 BC, is the oldest surviving written legal code whose text has been discovered.
Actus reus is Latin for 'guilty act' and refers to the physical element of a crime, which can be an action, a threat, or sometimes an omission to act. Mens rea is Latin for 'guilty mind' and refers to the mental element, namely the intent to commit a wrongful act.
Mala in se refers to acts considered inherently evil or morally wrong, such as felonies and property crimes, which are widely regarded as crimes regardless of jurisdiction. Mala prohibita refers to acts that are prohibited by statute without inherent wrongfulness, such as jaywalking or unlicensed fishing.
The Nuremberg trials, held after the Second World War, established that individuals acting on behalf of a government can be tried for violations of international law without the protection of sovereign immunity. They marked the beginning of individual criminal accountability under international law, and the International Criminal Court was established in 1998 through the Rome Statute to extend this principle permanently.