Sanction

Sanctions have been described as civil and criminal the difference between them according to Austin being that the civil sanction may be remitted or enforced at the option of the individual, but the criminal sanction cannot be so remitted or so enforced, but that only the public may remit or at its option enforce the sanction. A criminal sanction is in fact merely a punishment; and a civil sanction is simply a right or right of action with its consequences to the unsuccessful parties. In a more general sense, a sanction has been defined as a conditional evil annexed to a law to produce obedience to that law; and in a still wider sense, a sanction means simply an authorization of anything, occasionally, sanction is used to denote a statute, the part being used to denote the whole - Brown.