If a person commits any unlawful act, it is not necessary that he bears responsibility, including criminal. This is due to the fact that in order to attract a person, the grounds for criminal liability are necessary . The corpus delicti is clearly formulated in the legislation, therefore, only if the act will correspond exactly to it, it will be possible to talk about the application of coercive measures.
The concept of "basis of criminal liability"
Repeated changes in legislative language are related to the fact that criminal law expresses the political will of the state at a certain stage of development. Today, when there was a rejection of the totalitarian model of building a society, we see a definition in the law that states that an act must contain absolutely all the signs of the composition in order to be considered criminal. Thus, the basis of criminal liability is the composition. Of course, this norm is most successful for law enforcement, it allows you to exclude a range of acts that may be criminal on formal grounds, but do not have all the signs. At the same time, disputes do not cease in the literature, because any legislative definition is subjected to serious scientific criticism.
Philosophical Question of Responsibility
The basis of criminal liability can be represented in a philosophical or social sense. The problem here is why the person should be punished for the act. Factors such as choice of behavior, will and ability to be responsible for one’s actions become important. Indeed, the basis of criminal liability may not exist if the person could not choose a different model of behavior, acted under duress. For example, pressure can be expressed in moral or physical forms. If an unlawful action has occurred as a result of this, a person may be
exempted from criminal liability.Legal aspect
It has already been said that the legislative definition by which a guilty person can be held liable for an act helps us to identify the basis of criminal liability. The whole set of norms dedicated to this should be analyzed in direct accordance with the letter of the law, that is, a literal interpretation. As a rule, two large groups of responsibility are distinguished in the literature: positive and negative. Undoubtedly, we consider negative liability in criminal law, because a person undergoes deprivation, which are established by law.
Problems
Having considered this issue, it is important to pay attention to problematic aspects. They are associated with the interpretation of the concept of “basis of criminal responsibility”. The definition given above refers to signs of composition. Meanwhile, the criminal law does not say what the composition is. Therefore, for a specific crime, it develops on the basis of law enforcement practice, the general concept of a crime and its signs. It is important to understand that there should not be an extended interpretation so that a person is only responsible for what he has done.