Russian Criminal Law Policy and Legal Content of Criminal Law

Abstract

The article is prepared based on the theses of speech delivered on March 29, 2017 at the round-table conference On Legal Content of Criminal Law dedicated to the 65th anniversary of Doctor of Law, Professor Yury Vladimirovich Golik held at the Moscow Academy of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. The author notes that the notion of “legal content of criminal law” is relatively new and not well-established from the theoretical standpoint, which leads to various approaches to its definition. Expediency and objective conditioning of review of the legal content of criminal law from the implemented legal policy perspective is justified. The article states that law derives from policy, expresses policy and serves as a means of its implementation while the acts of legislation and other statutory acts are one of the instruments for implementation of the pursued legal policy of the state, which is the only social formation entitled to accept, amend or cancel legal provisions itself or by delegation of its powers. Consequently, the criminal law content is determined by the criminal law policy carried out by the state. The author notes that from the positions of essence the legal content of criminal law requires assessment based on the understanding of law as the state will where law is understood as the will of the ruling class constructed as an act of legislation. This approach to definition of the legal content of criminal law corresponds to the following string of logic: state will (will of the ruling class) — legal (criminal law) policy — criminal law (criminal statute) and enables to establish that the state criminal law policy pursued by means (using the methods) of criminal law makes the determining influence on the legal content of criminal law.