Kotyay T. Interpretation of law on criminal liability: concepts, types, meanings.

The dissertation is devoted to a comprehensive study of concepts, principles, types and meanings of the law on criminal liability interpretation. It has been established that the interpretation of the rules of criminal law is to ascertain a comprehensive disclosure of its contents for the purpose of proper, uniform application. The interpretation of the criminal law itself is directly related to the authentic (legal) interpretation. We consider that it is appropriate to introduce a separate article in the law or a section that will explain the terminology used in the law. The need to interpret the rules of the law on criminal liability is caused by a number of objective and subjective factors, such as: abstractness, non-personification of law rules, their systematic nature, contradictions between the formal nature of criminal law rules and the dynamics of social relations, errors in the legislative technique, the use of valuation concepts, the presence of gaps in the legal regulation of criminal relations, the occurrence of conflicts between criminal law norms. An explanation is also needed in relation to the activity of the European Court of Justice and the impact of its interpretative practice on the understanding of domestic criminal law norms. The object of interpretation is the criminal law but not the text of the criminal law. The latter is only a means by which the body of constitutional control of Ukraine, in particular, interprets the criminal law norms. Principles of interpretation of criminal law are the most general basic requirements that have an organizing, orienting and informational influence on both the interpretation of the criminal law providing an adequate explanation of the content of a rule that is interpreted and on the effectiveness of interpretation itself. When interpreting the rules of criminal law, the subject of a law enforcement uses the following methods: 1) depending on the entity that clarifies the law – a) legal (official) interpretation; b) judicial interpretation; c) scientific (doctrinal) interpretation; 2) depending on the techniques (means) of interpretation – a) grammatical philological interpretation; b) systematic interpretation; c) historical interpretation; 3) depending on a volume of interpretation – a) literal (adequate) interpretation; b) restrictive interpretation; c) disseminating interpretation. The signs of a conflict of criminal law and gaps in the law on criminal liability are defined. The relevance of the chosen research topic in the context of occurrence of a significant number of gaps, collisions, evaluation concepts in the text of the criminal law is substantiated. The exceptional role of interpretation of crime qualification specified by general and abstract nature of criminal law is proved. Thus its application to a particular case requires the appropriate interpretation. The need for interpretation is caused by the fact that the rules of criminal law include a number of legal terms and concepts from other fields of knowledge. Moreover, the law on criminal liability contains a significant number of criminal law norms with blanket dispositions and evaluation features.