Criminal Responsibility for Violation of Regulatory Legislation

The article examines the problems of the constitutional legitimacy of criminal law norms with a blanket disposition. The norms of the criminal law on liability for violation of regulatory prescriptions formulate the corpus delicti using a blanket method of describing it, referring to a violation of sectoral or cross-sectoral regulatory norms or institutions. The design and application of criminal law norms with blanket dispositions, repeatedly legitimized by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, still pose particular theoretical and applied problems. Their analysis reveals the following conclusions.

1) When there is a mismatch between the blanket disposition and blanket legislation, it is necessary to distinguish between cases of a true absence of regulatory norms from the imaginary uncertainty of blanket criminal law. This can occur in two cases: a) when the law describes the act as “unlawful”, provided that the regulatory legislation does not know the legal forms of such behavior (such rules cannot be considered blanket); b) when there are no definitions of the concepts used in the text of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in the regulatory acts (such a regulatory deficiency can be overcome through legal or special technical advice).

2) The blanket disposition may contain or imply references exclusively to regulatory legal acts, and not to technical norms and rules and provisions of these acts that contain mandatory and not recommended prescriptions. Furthermore, the normative legal acts may occupy a different place in the hierarchical system of sources of law — from international treaties to regulations. Two circumstances are noted in this regard: a) a constitutionally admissible blanket reference to by-laws does not exclude situations in which regulations contradict laws and formulate prohibitions and restrictions not provided for by them; in this regard, the law enforcement officer must ensure that the bylaw blanket content of the norm is legitimate, both in terms of content and form; b) references in the blanket part of the criminal legal norm to regional normative legal acts is considered constitutionally justified to the extent that the principle of equality of citizens before the law is guaranteed: in the material composition — an indication of the consequences that are the main criminogenic sign, regardless of the type violated rules, and in formal offenses — the hierarchical and consistent nature of the regulatory legislation adopted on the joint jurisdiction of the federation and its subjects.