Comparative Analysis of Criminal Law Principles in China And Russia

Abstract

Legal principles, being the basis of legal norms, reflect people's understanding and perception of the basic laws, contain legislative value motivation, the basic spirit and direction of law enforcement interests. The paper focuses on the analysis of the criminal law principles in China and Russia. The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation enshrines five principles: legality, equality of citizens before the law; guilt; justice; humanism. Articles 3, 4 and 5 of the Criminal Code of the People's Republic of China (PRC) of 1997 provide for the principle of legality, the principle of equality of citizens before the law, the principle of conformity of punishment with crime and criminal liability, respectively. These three articles are a novel of the PRC Criminal Code of 1997. The basic principles of criminal law are considered one of the main problems in criminal law. In the process of drafting the Criminal Code, legislative and judicial bodies, as well as experts had different opinions as to whether it is necessary to further provide the basic principles in the Criminal Code of the PRC, what basic principles should be added, how and which Chapter of the PRC Criminal Code should describe these basic principles, etc. All these issues and their solutions are considered in this paper. The authors come to the conclusion that in both countries the principles of criminal law are understood as fundamental ideas provided for in the criminal law, which, reflecting the universal values, determine both its content as a whole and the content of its individual institutions. The researchers propose to include the principle of humanism in the General part of the Criminal Code, and to exclude the principle of guilt from a number of principles of the Criminal Code.