Evaluative features in the definition of crimes in the legislation of the Russian Federation: problems of defining the concept

Abstract

In this work, the author examines some features of the concept of evaluative features in the corpus delicti in the legislation of the Russian Federation. The article notes the ambiguity of the approach to defining the concept of the evaluative features of a criminal offense. The author also notes that the current legislation lacks a legal approach to designating evaluative features, and the rapid development and modernization of the doctrines on the corpus delicti determine the need to develop a new and more objective approach to their definition. To offer the author's vision of the term "evaluative feature of the corpus delicti", two approaches are used in the work, the first of which is reduced to a review of doctrinally developed definitions of this term, and the second is to establish the semantic property of such. As a result of the conducted research, it was concluded that the specified features in the model of the corpus delicti should be understood as special conditions stipulated in the dispositions of the norms of the Special Part of the Criminal Law, which at the same time act as a characteristic of a certain feature or features of the corpus delicti, the criminal-legal content of which is established by the subject implementing the criminal-legal norm, or by a person with legal knowledge, taking into account the specific circumstances of the case. In the presented definition, it is necessary to detail the circle of persons who establish the evaluative features. The subjects implementing the criminal-legal norm include both law enforcement officers and other participants in the criminal process (in particular, the defense attorney), and the persons with legal knowledge include specialists, representatives of the criminal-legal doctrine.