The Theory of Criminal Law Should Not Be Reduced to the Analysis and Criticism of Criminal Legislation

Abstract

In both normative and sociological senses criminal law includes three components — criminal legislation, judicial practice, and criminal law doctrine, and the development of this branch of law is possible only in their unity. The criminal law doctrine is to a certain extent superior to the other components of the "triad" and involves the development of the branch’s principles, goals and objectives. At the same time, the improvement of criminal law is not the only goal of the theory of criminal law. It should not be limited only to criticism of the current legislation and proposals for its improvement. However, the vast majority of modern domestic criminal law publications, such as monographs, articles in legal periodicals, dissertations, are devoted to criticism of the current Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Indeed, the current criminal law is not perfect, but the "imbalance" of research into the "law-making" side significantly reduces the scope of criminal law doctrine. And there will always be demand for theoretical studies on the analysis of the subject and method, system and objectives of criminal law, its sources.Debatable, for example, still is the issue of the legal nature of the decisions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and, in particular, the judgments of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. The explanations of the Plenum of the Supreme Court are a special kind of judicial interpretation and a fairly reliable tool for the courts to understand "the letter of the criminal law" and it’s applicability to the particular case. As for the assessment of the legal nature of the judgments of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, the criminal law doctrine often fails to notice that they touch upon the methodological problems of the theory of criminal law. In relation to a number of criminal law prohibitions, judgments of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation are a source of criminal law, along with the Criminal Code. The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation specified the most important principle of criminal law — the principle of legality and clarified the characteristics of criminality of socially dangerous acts prohibited by criminal law, which is directly related to the issue of criminal liability. In this sense, the Constitutional Court formulated a new and important addition to the content of the principle of legality — the certainty of criminal law rules, and, first of all, the criminal law prohibitions. Thus, the judicial authority overtook the criminal law doctrine in solving one of the most important issues for criminal proceedings.