Towards a Re-Principled Criminal Law (original) (raw)

Analysis of the Substantive and Procedural Elements of the Principle of Legality

The law, in general, and more specifically the criminal law is guided by some basic principles. One of the principles, which is most important, is the principle of legality which represents the criminal discipline regarding the abolition of the retrospective power of the unfavorable norm. This can also be considered as the bad retrospective power. This paper focuses on analyzing this principle in the doctrinal aspect. The analysis focuses on how the principle of legality is enforced and interpreted on International Law and Albanian Criminal Law. This paper also aims to analyze different decisions of the European Court of Justice and Constitutional Court of Albania to find out the effect of this principle.

Constitutional criminal law

Századvég Edition, 2021

When it comes to the constitutionalisation of criminal law, a distinction must be made between the mere constitutional promotion of criminal law guarantees and the constitutionalisation of full criminal law. The latter can be supported by promoting a number of positions in criminal law theory and classifying different regulations of criminal offences as unconstitutional. If this endeavour can then get a majority in the constitutional court of a given country, it will be possible to bypass the legislative majority and shape criminal law in a particular direction. In this regard, the Supreme Court of Canada in particular has proven to be a partner in the expanded constitutionalisation of criminal law. Therefore, after analysing constitutionalisation on a more modest scale, which is more general, the particular analyses should begin with Canada. Then the analyses should be continued with the Germans, who were also exemplary in this area, although it must be pointed out in advance that an increased constitutionalisation is less to be found in the decisions of the German constitutional judges than in the intellectual products of activist professors of criminal law. However, since they are influential in criminal legal science in a number of European countries, including Hungary, it is worth taking a closer look. Finally, I conclude this section by examining constitutionalisation efforts that have emerged in Hungarian criminal law. In most countries where constitutional adjudication exists, the constitutionalisation of criminal law means that the guarantees traditionally developed in criminal law theory have been raised to the level of constitutional guarantees. The observation of these guarantees is checked by the constitutional judges both at the level of legislation and the judicial application of the law. The most important of these are the principles of nullum crimen sine lege and nulla poena sine lege; they ensure that only acts that are deemed to be criminal offences by law at the time when they are committed can be punished and would only be punished with the penalty prescribed at that time. In a broader sense, these safeguards prohibit retroactive effect across the legal system, but the severity of criminal sanctions in this area has also resulted in a stricter guarantee system. In this way, the prohibition of analogy in criminal law derives from these principles, since in the context of a modern world that strives for predictability, it would be intolerable if, using an analogy, the judge came to the conclusion that an earlier act committed by someone was a crime. This leads to the prohibition of judicial customary law in this area, if it is used to expand criminal liability in a way that it contradicts the purely grammatical meaning of the relevant legal provision. While both analogy and judicial case law are used in most branches of law today, these are legal techniques which are not possible due to the severity of criminal sanctions. These principles, which have been transformed into constitutional guarantees, also require the laws to be the precisely defined, the lack of which is not unconstitutional in other areas of law. Another such principle of criminal law raised to the status of constitutional guarantee is the presumption of innocence, according to which only persons who were found guilty by a final court decision can be considered guilty and be punished. The same principle applies to the right to defence, which guarantees the right to defend the suspect as a constitutional guarantee.

Rule of Law Principle as a Principle of Criminal Procedure (On Materials of the European Court of Human Rights)

International Journal of Advanced Research

The urgency of the study is stipulated by the importance of the European Court of Human Rights practice studying in order to determine the content of the rule of law principle. The purpose of the article is to elucidate the rule of law principle as a principle of criminal procedure by means of the European Court of Human Rights practice. The study is based on the paradigm of human rights priority over positive law and understanding of law, formed within the natural law school, distinguishing between law and the law, and judicial precedent, legal doctrine and principles of law are recognized as the forms of law. The study of the European Court of Human Rights practice led to the use of content analysis method and the hermeneutic method. The article clarifies that the pluralism of approaches to understanding the rule of law does not preclude the identification of ideas constituting the rule of law and are named in most of the rule of law theories, including the following: no one can b...

In Pursuit of Basics for a New Principle of Legal Reserve in Supranational Criminal Law

Reflecting on the future challenges inherent in a globalized world is a pressing need at all levels (public sector, private sector and civil society). If the aim is to avoid asymmetries provoked by globalization and to face up, effectively and legitimately, to its growing risks, such as international financial instability and climate change or problems related to migration, poverty and crime, there is no alternative but to seek more effective mechanisms for cooperation and policy integration. However, these mechanisms must be introduced without neglecting the legitimacy of international and supranational institutions and of the decisions arising from them. With this backdrop in mind, this paper focuses on the study of the principle of legal reserve in criminal matters and aims to find basics for its adjustment to a supranational order, specifically to the EU. The purpose here is to show that the traditional principle of legal reserve may be configured differently at EU level, providing that a minimum content based on the mutual reinforcement of different ways of legitimacy is safeguarded. This would only be possible, however, if the new legislative discourse ensures the emergence of a rational criminal law. The legality principle is not currently working, even in national contexts, where it is undoubtedly going through a profound crisis of identity.

Some considerations on the principles of law

2020

Any scientific intercession that has as objective the understanding of the significances of the “principle of law” needs to have an interdisciplinary character, the basis for the approach being the philosophy of law. In this study we fulfill such an analysis with the purpose to underline the multiple theoretical signifi cances due to this concept, but also the relationship between the juridical principles and norms, respectively the normative value of the principle of the law. Thus, extensive references to the philosophical and juridical doctrine in the matter are being materialized. This study is a pleading to refer to the principles in the work for the law’s creation and application. Starting with the diff erence between “given” and “constructed”, we propose the distinction between the “metaphysical principles” outside the law, which by their contents have philosophical significances, and the “constructed principles” elaborated inside the law. We emphasize the obligation of the la...

THE CONCEPT AND MEANING OF LEGAL SECURITY IN CRIMINAL LAW

Teka Komisji Prawniczej PAN Oddział w Lublinie, 2018

The article emphasizes the importance of legal security in criminal law. The proposed definition of legal securityaccording to which legal security is a state achieved by law established in general, and in particular by means of criminal law, in which human life's goods and interests are protected in the most comprehensive and effective possible mannerharmonizes properly with the most important functions of criminal law, namely with a protective function and a guarantee function. The proposed understanding of legal security may be helpful for clarifying numerous issues related to the implementation of both the protective function and the guarantee function of criminal law. Although legal security is a particularly important value in criminal law, in the hitherto achievements of the doctrine and in the jurisprudence of criminal law, this value is sparsely the subject of considerations. The article indicates the necessity and possibility of further detailed research in the field of implementing the idea of legal security in criminal law.

Legality and the Prosecution of Crimes

1989

The author makes an attempt to define the notion of legality in criminal justice. In the course of this he points out the differences between legality and officiality /to proceed ex officio/, and also determines the element of the principle of legality. The study deals among these with the duty of the state to investigate crimes, in details. It calls the attention to the constitutional problems being rooted in the selective prosecution of crimes, which also appear as problems concerning the distribution of power between the legislator and the agencies applying the law. The author challenges the principle of mandatory prosecution of all crimes because its enforcement cannot be granted which also raises constitutional tensions.

Interpreting The Expansion of The Principles of Legality in The New Criminal Code and Its implications for Legal Certainty in The Progressive Legal Perspective

International Journal of Membrane Science and Technology

In the Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 1 of 2023 concerning the Criminal Code, the principle of legality is formulated differently from the basic idea of the colonial one. The Indonesian criminal law system adheres to the principle of legality with a prohibition on the use of analogical legal interpretation. The question is, what about our new Criminal Code? In this study, the type of legal research used was a sociological juridical approach. Primary data was obtained from data sources in the field. Secondary data was obtained from primary legal material of Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 1 of 2023 concerning the Criminal Code and related laws and regulations, as well as from books and other legal research journals. Reforming criminal law with a balance between formal legality and material legality is expected to create a criminal system that considers justice and legal benefits in addition to legal certainty. Based on the findings, this can be concluded. The concept...

Dynamics of the implementation of the protective role in the conduct of crimes: the practice of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms

Cuestiones Políticas

Criminal law offers the possibility of interfering with human life. To avoid such unjustified interference, society and the state must guarantee that human and civil rights are protected and that the standards established in the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms are observed. Therefore, it is important to analyze the dynamics of the implementation of the protective function in the conviction of crimes in the interpretation of the European Court of Human Rights ECHR. In the methodological, he made of dialectics and documentary observation. The work aims to analyze the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, which tracks the dynamics of the protection function in sentencing for crimes. As a result of the study, the dynamics of the protection function in sentencing for criminal offenses were clarified through the practice of the ECHR, the problematic issues of the implementation of the protection function were analyzed in the example of Ukra...