Limits of Autonomy in Criminal Law

Abstract

The article raises a question about the autonomy of criminal law. Various aspects of the doctrinal understanding of the limits of criminal law and its scope in relation to the positive branches of legislation are considered. The author in the context of the existence of the concept of autonomy (independence) of criminal law regulation questions the limits of judicial interpretation. In this context, antagonistic views on the limits of the mechanism of criminal law regulation are considered. Particular attention is given to the fundamental premise that the functional autonomy of criminal law generates not only a protective component, but also a regulatory function, and the law enforcement officer has the right to decide a particular case, based on concepts borrowed from other branches of law, but it can give them a different meaning and significance than the one they are endowed with in these positive (regulating specific social relations) sectors. The author comes to the conclusion that an autonomous interpretation of foreign industry features and concepts of regulatory legislation is scarcely credible. If a criminal law is to protect economic relations arising from the static and dynamic nature of objects of civil rights and their turnover from criminal encroachments, its subordination to the provisions of regulatory legislation is inevitable. The determinism here should be manifested precisely in accordance with the description of the signs of the crime to the provisions of regulatory norms. As a result, the autonomy of criminal law may create uncertainty about the content of the rule of law itself and allow for unlimited discretion in its enforcement. In this formulation of the issue, the autonomy of criminal law regulation is replaced by a very different approach — the autonomy of the judicial interpretation of criminal law. However, in this case there is a substitution of concepts, and the autonomy of criminal law is associated not so much with the regulatory function as with the law enforcement of criminal law.