Judicial interpretation of the criminal law: questions of theory

Abstract

The interpretation of the law in judicial activity, as well as the search for specific features of the interpretation of the criminal law, belong to the category of topics whose relevance in modern conditions is increasing much. The contradiction between the growing criminalization and the increasing concern about the observance of human rights and freedoms actualize the status of interpretation as one of the most important aspects of legal activity, directly ensuring the rule of law in criminal law relations.
 In any law-making text, there are always a lot of subjective meanings, only one of which can objectively be the basis of a judicial decision. Based on the generalization of the existing approaches to understanding the interpretation of the law, two of its basic models are distinguished - the model of the presentation of the parliamentary meaning and the model of the presentation of the judicial meaning of the law. It is proved that law enforcement is determined precisely by the judicial meaning of the law, the establishment of which in the process of interpretation is a significant component of judicial legal policy. Understanding the meaning of the criminal law has a specificity being predetermined by the public nature of the branch of criminal law, this impresses the course of action of the court within the framework of the implementation of the principle of separation of powers. However, this specificity cannot consist of, as it is commonly considered to be in science, in limiting the methods of interpretation used by the court or establishing a rigid hierarchical sequence in the application of methods of interpretation.
 The specificity of the interpretation of the criminal law should be determined not by the methods of interpretation, but by the principles of criminal law. Their content, in turn, should be revealed through an appeal to the goals of criminal law regulation. According to the results of the study, the general approach to the interpretation of the criminal law, which being literal as a matter of priority, should combine a restrictive understanding of any legal restrictions and a broad understanding of any defenses against a charge of a crime.