Publication details
Historie a limity objektu trestného činu
| Title in English | The History and Limits of the Protected Legal Interest in Criminal Law |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2026 |
| Type | Peer-reviewed scientific article |
| Magazine / Source | Právník |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | Web nakladatele |
| Doi | https://doi.org/10.67473/pr20261105 |
| Keywords | object of a criminal offence; legitimacy of criminal law; legal interest; rechtsgut; subsidiarity of criminal repression; theory of cultural norms; statutory definition of a criminal offence |
| Attached files | |
| Description | In this article, I provide an account of the history of the object of a criminal offence, the limits of its content, and the consequences that may follow from a legislative overstepping of those limits. In the first part of the article, I focus on the development of the doctrine of the object of a criminal offence, from conceptions that regarded subjective rights, objective law, or the state’s right to obedience to the legal order as the object of a criminal offence, to the theory of the legal interest. In the second part, I address the distinction between the formal and material conceptions of the legal interest, that is, the question of whether criminal law may protect any legal interest designated by the legislature, or only such a legal interest whose criminal law protection is subject to further conditions in order to be regarded as legitimate. Within the discussion of the material conception of the legal interest, I pay particular attention to the theory of cultural norms, the theory of the constitutional legal interest, and the personal theory of the legal interest, as well as to the possible dialectic between these theories. Special attention is given to the theory of cultural norms and its relationship to the other theories discussed. In the final part of the article, I focus on the practical consequences of applying the material conception of the legal interest, especially on the question of its significance for assessing the constitutionality of statutory definitions of criminal offences. |