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Function and Nature
Exercise 1.Read the text and answer the following questions:
1. How can a person be punished for a criminal case?
2. When was death penalty abolished?
3. What is the function of a criminal law?
4. Is a suicide considered a crime?
5. What are the looks of libertarians, moralists and paternalists in respect of a criminal law?
The most serious interferences which can lawfully be made with any individual's freedom are those which are permitted by the criminal law. Under the criminal law, we can be imprisoned, lose our property or even our lives (theoretically only, since although the death penalty is still the mandatory penalty for treason and piracy with violence, the practical possibility of someone being hanged finished with the Murder - Abolition of Death Penalty Act 1965). The rules about what is and what is not a crime and what will provide a defence to a crime confer powers upon the police to hold persons without charge and to search them and their property in an attempt to find evidence or secure a confession. Powers of this «sort are said to be justified because their existence is a guarantee that those who would voluntarily obey shall not be sacrificed to those who would not.
The criminal law exists to protect various interests, most obviously those in life, limb and property. It seeks to achieve this by punishing people. There is much debate as to the function of punishment. In the past a number of things have been crimes under English law which does not harm anyone, except perhaps the perpetrator, because they are thought to be morally wrong. Thus until 1961 it was a crime in England to commit suicide. This had, of course, no significance where there was a suicide, but because suicide was a crime it followed that attempted suicide was a crime.
A group called libertarians take the view that what someone does in such a way as to affect only himself or herself should never be the business of the criminal law.
In contrast a group of people whom we might call moralists, say that it is very much the law's business to enforce a particular set of beliefs about what is right and wrong in personal conduct.
A third approach to the question of legal intervention into private behaviour comes from the paternalists. They say that the law should not necessarily intervene to prevent something because it is immoral, but there are occasions when intervention is justified because «the State knows best».
The debate is unresolved. During two historical periods (1957-59 and 1964-67) there was passed a good deal of liberal legislation but the most recent report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee seems to involve a trend back towards moralism.
Exercise 2. Give the English equivalents for the following:
– уголовное право;
– измена;
– отменять смертную казнь;
– защищать смертную казнь;
– защищать различные интересы;
– собственность;
– наказание;
– преступление;
– совершать самоубийство.
Text 2