Publication details
O jednotě skutku v trestním právu hmotném
| Title in English | On the Unity of Act in the Substantive Criminal Law |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2026 |
| Type | Peer-reviewed scientific article |
| Magazine / Source | Právník |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | Odkaz |
| Doi | https://doi.org/10.67473/pr20260902 |
| Keywords | act; unity of the act; concurrence of criminal offences; ideal concurrence; multiplicity of criminal offences |
| Attached files | |
| Description | The article deals with the issue of the unity of a criminal act in substantive criminal law, that is, the question according to which criteria it should be assessed whether the offender’s conduct constitutes a single act or, conversely, several separate acts in the substantive legal sense. First, the concept of an act is defined as an event in the external world consisting in human conduct, and related notions are distinguished, such as the description of the act. The article then analyses the doctrine of the unity of an act and its basic criteria, namely the unity of conduct, the unity of consequence, the unifying intent of the offender, and the will of the legislator. The article further discusses certain derived criteria and their manifestations in the assessment of the unity of an act, particularly in relation to the stages of the development of a criminal offence, special forms of criminal offences, offences with complex statutory elements, the offence of intoxication, and the so-called “clamping effect” of a so-called umbrella offence. Attention is also devoted to complex and borderline cases in which traditional criteria may not lead to a satisfactory or unambiguous solution. In this context, the author discusses the possibility of the subsidiary application of a subjective element in assessing the unity of an act. The aim of the article is to provide a structured overview of the doctrine of the unity of an act and to offer reflections that may assist in resolving difficult cases in both the theory and practice of substantive criminal law. |