Differentiation issues in the mechanism of criminal law influence: statement of the problem
The article analyzes the negative trends in the construction of criminal legislation, examines the etymology of the term “differentiation”, outlines a range of related problems (criminalization, legal technique, the mechanism of criminal law exposure), determines an algorithm for a differentiated approach to restriction of law by the means of criminal law. The current criminal law lacks conciseness, terminological uniqueness, conceptual uniqueness and consistency. In this regard the priority tasks of criminal law research are the specification of legislation, the interpretation of its meaning and the structuring of content. It seems reasonable to conduct a meaningful analysis of criminal law, identify the functional significance of the institutions it has established and establish the subordination of the latter. One of the solutions of this problem may be the use of special technical terminology (mechanism, differential, differentiation). Differentiation in criminal law should be considered in the structure of the mechanism of criminal law influence. The etymological analysis of this category allows us to conclude the following: differentiation in criminal law is a division of the criminal law influence (legal restrictions) into a separate, private, non-identical in its qualitative and quantitative characteristics; the establishment of coercion under different conditions determined by general legal principles (humanism, justice, the economy of repression, etc.). The greatest difficulty in terms of establishing the correlation of legal means of differentiating criminal law exposure is represented by the issues of delimiting criminalization and qualification of crimes. It seems that the significance of differentiating criminal law exposure goes beyond the meaningful consequences of committing a socially dangerous act. Similar to the mathematical differential the institutes are concretized, and the criminal law norms are further improved, built in the order of interaction during the initial election and the subsequent implementation of the criminal law influence. A conditionally constant value for the differentiation of criminal law exposure can be called the sanction of the article of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, containing the typical amount of state coercion for the commission of a typical socially dangerous act. For a variable value increments or exclusions of legal restrictions that are used, depending on certain conditions (legal facts) can be taken, which correct a typical criminal legal effect when a court elects it.
Keywords: criminal law influence; criminal law mechanism; criminal liability; punishment; differentiation in criminal law
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