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Who are the parties involved in criminal and civil proceedings?

In criminal proceedings, a charge is normally brought against the defendant by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on behalf of the Crown.
The parties are the prosecution and the defendant. In England and Wales, the prosecution is sometimes referred to as the Crown. The side of the prosecution is made up of prosecuting barristers or prosecuting solicitors, also called prosecutors. Instead, the defendant is the person who is accused of committing the crime. 

In civil cases, the parties are normally two or more individuals, companies, or institutions. The parties are known as the “claimant”, the party who brings the case, and the “defendant”, the party against whom the case is brought.

We can say that “the claimant brings a claim against the defendant”, “issues proceedings against the defendant”, or simply “sues the defendant”. We do not say “the claimant prosecutes the defendant” as we do in criminal law.

In the past, instead of “claimant” the term “plaintiff” was used, a word derived from the French verb plaindre, meaning “to complain” or “to grumble”. Following changes introduced by the Civil Procedure Rules in 1999, promoting the use of plain English in the courts, the word “plaintiff” and many other archaic legal terms were replaced with simpler equivalents. However, the term “plaintiff” is still used in the United States and some other jurisdictions.

At the appellate stage in both civil and criminal proceedings, the parties are normally called the “appellant”, referring to the party who appeals the previous judgment, and the “respondent”, the person who responds to the appeal.

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