Panko, K.K. Rules and methods of the Russian criminal law-making

Abstract: The article is devoted to the issues regarding principles, rules, methods and means of legislative technique of criminal law of Russia. The author evaluates basic, general and specific rules and methods within legislative technique, providing and analyzing the classification of rules in criminal law-making. One of the basic positions in this article is the understanding of the legal technique by the author as a developed and practically verified combination of principles, rules, means and methods for the development, formation, publication and systematization of the normative and individual legal acts. Classification of legislative activities based upon the contents and purposes of relevant issues allows to single out three types of legal techniques: 1) techniques for the organization of legislative activity; 2) techniques for the conceptual development of drafts of legislative decisions; 3) techniques for writing and layout of draft laws (legislative technique). Further, the author analyzes specific principles, methods, rules and other technical components. In particular, correlation of abstract and casuistic methods should be regulated by the following rule: the more abstract is the description of the actions comprising the objective elements of a crime, the more specific the description of consequences of these acts should be, and vice versa. This rule allows to overcome the unilateral character of a legislative construction, but they may only be applied to the materially defined crimes, while the formally defined crimes may be formulated only by referring to a specific type and kind of behavior.

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