Does the New York State Governor have the authority to impose fines? The New York State Governor has allegedly declared a "fine for violations of the state's social distancing protocol from $500 to $1,000...." The government website claiming that declaration references a March 20 executive order ("New York State on PAUSE"), but that executive order does not stipulate fines. Does the state executive in fact have the authority to impose a fine without legislation? If so, how can it be prosecuted? (I struggle to imagine how a government prosecutor would successfully press a fine against a person or business that would withstand any judicial scrutiny given that the closest thing I can even find to "social distancing protocols" is this statement in the executive order: "Businesses and entities that provide other essential services must implement rules that help facilitate social distancing of at least six feet.")
Public Health Law PBH §12(1) says Any person who violates, disobeys or disregards any term or provision of this chapter or of any lawful notice, order or regulation pursuant thereto for which a civil penalty is not otherwise expressly prescribed by law, shall be liable to the people of the state for a civil penalty of not to exceed two thousand dollars for every such violation. I presume that there is a legal path leading to the Public Health chapter of NY laws that connects the gubernatorial order to Public Health Law.
Since this apparently amends the law giving colleges and universities the power to adopt and enforced various regulations, what it really means is that if such an institution adopts a rule in violation of this law, it may not legally enforce that law. It might also give an affected student a right to sue if such a rule is adopted and enforced. As a comment by ohwilleke mentions, such a law might well authorize a court to issue an injunction forbidding the institution from enforcing the kind of rule prohibited by the law. Note that it is not at all uncommon to have &quot;or else&quot; provisions in different sections of the law. For example Section 123 of the (hypothetical) New France state code might prohibit having a faked driver's license, section 124 prohibit obtaining a license through false or misleading statements on nthe application, and section 458 say &quot;anyone who violates sections 123, 124, 125, or 126 shall be fined up to $2,000, or imprisoned for up to 1 year, or both, as a court may think just&quot;. Thus it is not always easy to find what penalties, if any, apply to a code section.
Short Answer This is governed by state law (for state law enforcement officers granting this authority) or federal law (in the case of authority granted by a federal law enforcement officer), so the details may vary from case to case. In many circumstances, however, a law enforcement officer has the authority to temporarily 'grant' his authority to another private citizen in order to deal with a specific incident. When this is done one says that the law enforcement officer &quot;deputized&quot; the person who was given this authority. Long Answer The Power To Deputize Civilians Most states have statutory circumstances under which certain kinds of law enforcement officers can deputize a non-law enforcement officer to carry out a law enforcement function under the supervision, direction and control of a law enforcement officer, on an incident by incident basis. For example, if a single sheriff responds to a bar fight with several people who need to be arrested, under most state's law, the sheriff could authorize a bouncer or patron at the bar who wouldn't have the power to make a citizen's arrest under the circumstances (e.g. because the patron arrived at the scene after the alleged fight took place) to detain a suspect whom the sheriff has the power to arrest, until additional law enforcement personnel can come to the scene to assist. Colorado Revised Statutes § 16-3-202 is typical of such a statute. It states: (1) A peace officer making an arrest may command the assistance of any person who is in the vicinity. (2) A person commanded to assist a peace officer has the same authority to arrest as the officer who commands his assistance. (3) A person commanded to assist a peace officer in making an arrest shall not be civilly or criminally liable for any reasonable conduct in aid of the officer or for any acts expressly directed by the officer. (4) Private citizens, acting in good faith, shall be immune from any civil liability for reporting to any police officer or law enforcement authority the commission or suspected commission of any crime or for giving other information to aid in the prevention of any crime. Further, another Colorado statute provides that &quot;conduct which would otherwise constitute an offense is justifiable and not criminal when it is required or authorized by a provision of law or a judicial decree binding in Colorado,&quot; including laws &quot;defining duties of private citizens to assist public servants in the performance of certain of their functions.&quot; Colorado Revised Statutes § 18-1-701 (in pertinent parts). The exact details of how someone is deputized, who may deputize someone, and what authority this conveys varies in detail from state to state. Also, often this is done piecemeal, rather than globally, or is implied in part under common law agency principles. The power of a law enforcement officer to deputize someone to kill a dying deer hit in a car accident is likely to be in a different statutory section than the power of a law enforcement officer to deputize someone to make an arrest. People who are deputized by a law enforcement officer in this fashion are collectively called a posse. The posse was heavily used in rural areas and frontier areas into the early 20th century, but this authority is now, while still utilized, much less commonly used, and less familiar, especially in urban areas with large professional police departments. In these areas, it is more common for police to resort to mutual aid agreements with regional law enforcement agencies to seek reinforcements who are law enforcement officers at some other agency, rather than seeking help from private citizens. Other Solutions Often, conduct that literally fits the definition of prohibited conduct, like possession of a wildlife carcass without a license, is resolved in regulations or definitions in a statute or regulation that exclude the conduct in question from what is prohibited. For example, in Colorado, the definition of hunting, which is what you need a license to do, is defined in such a way as to exclude road kill related incidents. See, e.g., Colorado Revised Statutes § 33-1-102(25.5), (29) and (43). The Legal Doctrine Of Reliance On Official Authority There is also another legal doctrine that can make it possible to achieve almost the same result. As a matter of U.S. Constitutional law, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that a criminal defendant may not be punished for actions taken in good faith reliance upon authoritative assurances that the defendant will not be punished for his actions. See U.S. v. Laub, 385 U.S. 475 (1967); Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559 (1965); and Raley v. Ohio, 360 U.S. 423 (1959). For example, suppose that a 911 dispatcher tells a passing motorist that she has the authority to authorize the motorist to shoot and kill the deer because she is deputizing the motorist to do so, and that the applicable state law actually provides that a private citizen may be deputized to euthanize a deer struck in a car accident when a law enforcement officer deputizing the citizen is physically present. Despite this fact, if the motorist has no reason to believe that the dispatcher doesn't have this authority (even though the dispatcher does not have this authority under state law), the motorist is immune from criminal liability for shooting a deer out of season without a license pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court cases cited above. And, while the dispatcher's conduct may have technically violated state law by directing someone to violate the law under circumstances when the dispatcher did not have the authority to do so, the District Attorney is likely to decide that this technical violation of the state's hunting laws by the dispatcher, whether or not the dispatcher knew that the dispatcher did not have the authority to deputize the motorist, is not an offense that warrants prosecution. Indeed, prosecutors routinely overlook technical violations of the law by law enforcement officers who are carrying out their duties in good faith or for other non-selfish reasons (e.g. out of a desire to treat the downed deer humanely without diverting law enforcement resources urgently needed elsewhere at the time).
I would say no, it's not the same. There's a reasonable expectation of privacy that you have in an office that isn't present when you're standing on a roadside or in a city park. In Glik v. Cunniffe, the First Circuit said "The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities" was in the spirit of the First Amendment. And this is not limited to police; an arrest "in the course of filming officials in the hallway outside a public meeting of a historic district commission" was found to be a First Amendment violation in Iacobucci v. Boulter (1st Cir. 1999). But a private meeting in an office is not a "public place" as it is meant in Glik (even if the building is owned by the government.) And the Glik decision says "To be sure, the right to film is not without limitations. It may be subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions."
If we go by Indian case law (as we should), you have to find a way. The relevant case is K.P. Adbul Gafoor v. New India Assurance Ltd, where appellant drove on a motor cycle on a learner's permit without a licensed driver positioned correctly, in violation of Rule 3 of the Rules, and smacked someone. The bulk of the case is about the insurance and liability consequences of violating the rule: the main point here is that the court deemed this to violate the rules.
The legal hook is reported to be §129 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which authorizes use of force to disperse an illegal assembly, which this sort of is. No statute that I can find states that police can smack lawbreakers who are forced to disperse, but as is common in common law countries, the laws of India are not fully explicit on that which is allowed or forbidden for police to do. As this article indicates, systematic limits on police use of force remain to be developed.
In the United States, individual members (States) of the union are allowed to make their own constitutions and state laws &amp; regulations. This includes laws that may contradict Federal law, although this is a grey area. It usually comes down to enforcement: Federal laws are usually enforced by Federal law enforcement as they can not force states to do so. Further more, State prosecutors will usually not attempt to prosecute you for a Federal law infraction. Only Federal prosecutors OR the department of justice will do this. To see a more detailed explanation on this, look at this &quot;How Stuff Works&quot; article.
In the United States who has the authority and what is the procedure to determine if conduct by an individual is "illegal"? You are conflating several different ideas here, which is probably the source of your persistent confusion. 1) Actions are legal or not Illegal: Not authorized by law; Illicit ; unlawful; contrary to law The law sets out certain things that you must do (you must stop at a red light) and things you must not do (you must not drive under the influence). Sometimes actions fall into a gray area of the law, or aren't addressed at all, but if something is spelled out, then it's very clear whether the abstract action is legal or not. Running a red light is illegal. Driving under the influence is illegal. There are definitions and specified penalties for both. 2) A person may or may not be guilty of an illegal action Guilty: Having committed a crime or tort Abstract actions can be legal or illegal, but people commit crimes. When someone commits a crime, they are guilty of that crime. This is true whether or not they are ever prosecuted, or even if law enforcement knows who the guilty one is. If someone runs a red light at 2 in the morning on an empty street, it's still illegal and thus they are guilty of running a red - but no one will ever catch them. If someone is shot in the middle of the street, then someone is guilty of shooting them. Again, the shooter may never be found, but whoever they are, they are still guilty. 3) An individual may or may not be guilty of the crime of which they are charged. Charge: the statement of the alleged offense that brings a person to court If law enforcement (whether your local traffic cop or the FBI) believes that you are guilty of a crime, they can charge you with committing it. They may be right. They may be wrong. But the suspicion of having committed it is enough to charge you. To continue the traffic example: If an officer sees you running the red light, they can write you a ticket (effectively charging you) for doing so. They may or may not actually be right (it could have been yellow or malfunctioning, for example), but law enforcement has the power to charge regardless. 4) A defendant may or may be found guilty and convicted. Conviction: In a general sense, the result of a criminal trial which ends in a judgment or sentence that the prisoner is guilty as charged. Finding a person guilty by verdict of a jury. This is where the presumption of innocence comes in - the default assumption is that the accused did not commit the crime that they are being charged with, and it's the prosecutor's job to prove otherwise. If the accused is found to not be guilty of the crime, then they (presumably) didn't do it - it doesn't necessarily mean the crime didn't happen, just that this specific person didn't commit it. Alternatively, the defendant can be found not guilty for other reasons - the judge or jury can determine that the crime didn't take place, took place but was justified, or the defendant wasn't in their right mind at the time. On the other hand, if they are found guilty, they're convicted and sentenced to whatever an appropriate punishment is. TL;DR Whether something is legal is determined by the legislature when they pass laws. Someone who commits an illegal act is guilty of doing so, even if they are never charged. Again, this is determined by the legislature when they pass laws. People are charged with violations of specific laws by law enforcement. Defendants can be found guilty by the court system. In other words, only the courts can determine whether a specific individual actually committed illegal behavior, but the behavior is still illegal regardless.