Administrative Responsibility in Retrospect and Prospectv

Abstract

The article discusses the evolution of views on administrative responsibility and tendencies of development of this type of legal liability. In the Soviet and modern Russian law administrative liability has been considered as various legal phenomena - the administrative procedure of bringing to responsibility, responsibility for administrative offences and the overall legal responsibility for offences characterized by intrinsic differences. Thus, the administrative procedure of bringing to responsibility is characterized by sentencing in simplified procedures by an administrative body acting outside the field of judicial review, and as its purpose has the rapid enforcement of regulations of local and Central Government through punitive measures. The article notes that since the 60-ies of the XX century the law has provided for judicial appointment of individual punishment (corrective labour, administrative arrest, eviction in specially designated area, etc.), judicial control over the administrative authorities when inflicting a fine and has been determined by the features of guilt of a wrongful act as a basis for responsibility. By this, they limit the accountability of the administrative order, create conditions for the emergence of a new mechanism - the responsibility for administrative offences, which was finally formed with the systematization of legislation and the adoption of the Basis of Legislation of the USSR and the Union republics on Administrative Offences and the Administrative Offences Code of the RSFSR 1984. The author analyzes key concepts related to administrative responsibility, and finds that a Soviet legislator semantically matched the concept of 'administrative offence' with the term 'offence', introduced into the Administrative Offences Code 2001,which became a system error that led to the loss of the scope and criteria for regulation and eventually transformed the responsibility for administrative offences into the overall legal responsibility for a wrongdoing. Such changes from distorting mechanisms of legal liability and legislation on administrative offences has been turned into a platform for widespread use of disproportionate sanctions. This article takes an opportunity to address the problem and identifies the need for a substantial revision of all legislation, including the Criminal Code, on the basis of the principle of proportionality of punishments.