Social danger and unlawfulness of a crime: the correlation and assessment issues
The author analyzes the correlation between social danger and unlawfulness and their place in the structure of criminal offence and the structure of criminal-law assessment. He attempts to overcome traditional perception of the correlation between social danger and unlawfulness as between purely material (social danger) and formal (unlawfulness) signs of criminal offence. As a result he mentions that social danger on its own will have no particular criteria until the relations regulated by law have been analyzed in a wider juridical context. In the author’s opinion, this correlation could be matched with the categorical correlation between an abstract principle and a substance of particular relations. Focusing on a nature of current criminal-law regulation the author asserts that the concept of unlawfulness needs further development and should be recognized as a sign of criminal offence that requires a specific verification during the criminal-law assessment of an act.