Discretion has the meaning of acting on one's own

authority Authority is commonly understood as the legitimate power of a person or group of other people. In a civil state, ''authority'' may be practiced by legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government,''The New Fontana Dictionary of M ...

and judgment. In law, discretion as to legal rulings, such as whether evidence is excluded at a trial, may be exercised by a

judge A judge is a person who wiktionary:preside, presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a judicial panel. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other Evidence (law), evidence presented by the barris ...

. The ability to make decisions which represent a responsible choice and for which an understanding of what is lawful, right or wise may be presupposed.

In law

In the legal system, discretion is often defined as the ability of a judge to choose where, how and with what severity to sentence a person who has been convicted. A person chooses to utilize his or her options and decides which to use, whether this is a police officer arresting a person on the street (criminal) or evicting someone from an apartment (civil) or anywhere in between. Discretion can be found in all stages within

criminal justice Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other ...

systems. Prosecutors have discretionary power in the criminal justice process. They have the ability to initiate and terminate all criminal prosecutions. They have to use discretion to weigh the rights of the accused, the feelings of the victim, and the capacity of prisons when determining a proper punishment. Prosecutors control plea bargains and thus have possibly the most discretion-based role in the criminal justice process. If they believe a person deserves to be in prison, they will pursue that route, knowing that the prisons are very full and would then lead to a person being released early without serving his full sentence. An abuse of discretion can be defined as "a failure to take into proper consideration the facts and law relating to a particular matter; an arbitrary or unreasonable departure from precedent and settled judicial custom."

Etymology

The word discretion comes from the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

word "discernere", meaning to distinguish, or separate, between two things.''discernment''. (2024). Vocabulary.com. https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/discernment

References

External links

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