Constitutional and Criminal Law Protection of Human and Civil Rights and Freedoms

Abstract

The article presents an inter-branch study of the problems of constitutional law and criminal law protection of human and civil rights and freedoms. The analysis of current Russian legislation is used to determine the objects of legal protection. The concept of legal protection in the general theory of state and law is also the basis of branch legislation which takes into account the specific features of the object of legal regulation in constitutional and criminal law. The subject of the research is articles of Chapter 19 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation «Crimes against the Constitutional Rights and Freedoms of Man and Citizen». The main methodological instrument is the «safety index» introduced by the scholars of the Ural law school. The author shows its significance for Russian constitutional and criminal law and its role in protecting rights and freedoms. The hierarchy of values is presented from the standpoint of their criminal law protection. It is concluded that constitutional human and civil rights and freedoms as objects of criminal law protections have lower «safety indices» and insufficient criminal law protection compared to other legal values. The author analyzed the changes of the lawmakers position regarding constitutional rights and freedoms that are objects of criminal law protection, and the dynamics of this process. As legal protection greatly depends on the sanctions determined by the lawmakers, the question of their proportionality is raised. Alternative methods of researching this problem in Russian and foreign legal theory are presented. The sanction of the criminal law norm is then viewed not only as an element of the legal norm, but also within the system of external and internal connections from the standpoint of its place in the mechanism of criminal law regulation. The author touches upon the problem of constructing criminal law sanctions while taking into account the axiological aspect. In foreign research, the so-called «price theory» stands out, it understands law as a tax on behavior. Besides, the «localization coefficient» illustrates the experience of using the methodology instruments of other fields of research, including non-humanitarian ones, to study legal matters.