Criminal Liability in Conflictological Discourse

The paper deals with the history of criminal law and criminal liability in conflictological discourse. On the basis of ideas of legal pluralism, the authors investigate the transformation of the criminal and legal mechanism of conflict resolution from ancient times to the present. They study the customs of exile, blood vengeance, blood reconciliation, as well as a number of other customs of Amazonia and North America. The paper explains that such customs remain until now due to the expressed compensatory character and evaluates the origins of ritualization of conflict resolution procedures in ancient society. The authors examine the circumstances of the disappearance of the victim concept from repentant law, as well as the borrowing of the religious concept of responsibility not before the victim, but before the suzerain by secular law.
The authors note that many generations of lawyers have formed their professional consciousness under the influence of an indispensable formal cliché: for the committed crime the perpetrator must be held criminally liable not before the injured person, but before the State that is not in the least at times guilty of failing to provide the victim with a safe life. Few doubted that the postulate given is the only one true. This example of survivability of ancient criminal law customs demonstrates the interest of society in alternative ways of solving criminal law disputes. The authors conclude that legal pluralism is natural for the area of criminal law due to the expressed compensatory tendency in the society’s perception of criminal liability. The penetration of compensatory elements into modern criminal law is assessed as a positive and only possible trend of further criminal law development.

1. Albogachieva MS-G , Babich IL. Krovnaya mest v sovremennoy Ingushetii [Blood Revenge in Modern Ingushetia]. Etnograficheskoe obozrenie. 2010;6:138—139. (In Russ.)

2. Bobrovnikov VO. Musulmane Severnogo Kavkaza: obychay, pravo, nasilie. Ocherki po istorii i etnografii prava Nagornogo Dagestana [Muslims of the North Caucasus: custom, law, violence. Essays on the history and ethnography of the law of Nagorny Dagestan]. Moscow: Vost. lit. Publ.; 2002. (In Russ.)

3. Detkov AP. Teoreticheskie i metodologicheskie problemy penitentsiarnoy konfliktologii [Theoretical and methodological problems of penitentiary conflict]. Yekaterinburg: Urals State Law University Press; 2011. (In Russ.)

4. Kleandrov MI. Ekonomicheskoe pravosudie v Rossii: proshloe, nastoyashchee, budushchee [Economic justice in Russia: past, present, future]. Moscow: Volters Kluver; 2007. (In Russ.)

5. Kovalevsky MM. Rodovoy byt v nastoyashchem, nedavnem i otdalennom proshlom. Opyt v oblasti sravnitelnoy etnografii i istorii prava [The ancestral life in the present, recent and distant past. Experience in the field of comparative ethnography and the history of law]. St. Petersburg: Brockhaus — Efron Publ.; 1911. (In Russ.)

6. Kristi N. Predely nakazaniya [Limits of punishment].Moscow: Progress Publ.; 1985. (In Russ.)

7. Kudryavtsev SV. Konflikt i nasilstvennoe prestuplenie [Conflict and Violent Crime]. Moscow: Nauka Publ.; 1991. (In Russ.)

8. Leontovich FI. Istoriya russkogo prava [History of Russian Law]. Issue 1. Odessa: Imp. Novorus. Univer. Publ.; 1869. (In Russ.)

9. Mednikova MB. Bioarkheologiya detstva v kontekste rannezemledelcheskikh kultur Balkan, Kavkaza I Blizhnego Vostoka [Bioarchaeology of childhood in the context of early agricultural cultures of the Balkans, Caucasus and Middle East]. RAS Institute of Archeology. Moscow: Club Print Publ.; 2017. (In Russ.)

10. Pikhoya RG. tserkov v drevney rusi, konets X — pervaya polovina XIII v.: drevnerusskoe pokayannoe pravo kak istoricheskiy istochnik : dis. ... kand. ist. nauk [Church in Ancient Russia, end of the 10th — first half of the 13th century: Old Russian repentance as a historical source: Cand. Sci. (Law) Thesis]. Sverdlovsk; 1974. (In Russ.)

11. Radosteva YuV. eshche raz o disbalanse ugolovnogo zakona [Once again on the imbalance of the criminal law]. Society and Law. 2019;4:19—22. (In Russ.)

12. Samokvasov DYa. Kurs istorii russkogo prava [Course of the history of Russian Law]. Moscow: Moscow University Publ.; 1908. (In Russ.)

13. Sergeevich V. Lektsii i issledovaniya po drevney istorii russkogo prava [Lectures and researches on the ancient history of Russian law]. St. Petersburg: M. Stasyulevich’s Publ.; 1910. (In Russ.)

14. Karelskiy BM, Perevalov VD, editors. Teoriya gosudarstva i prava : uchebnik dlya vuzov [Theory of the state and law: textbook for universities]. Moscow: Infra-M — Norma publ.; 2001. (In Russ.)

15. Fridland P. Ot pokayaniya k ustrasheniyu: teoriya i praktika vysshey mery nakazaniya vo frantsii rannego novogo vremeni [From repentance to fear: theory and practice of capital punishment in France of early New Time]. In: Muravyeva MG, editor. Vina i pozor v kontekste stanovleniya sovremennykh evropeyskikh gosudarstv (XVI—XX vv.) : sbornik statey [Guilt and shame in the context of the formation of modern European states (16th-20th centuries): a collection of articles]. St. Petersburg: European University in St. Petersburg Publ.; 2011. (In Russ.)

16. Yushko O. Vaynakhskaya vendetta. Krovnaya mest ot zakona do bespredela Vainakh vendetta. [Vainakh vendetta. Blood revenge from the law to the lawlessness]. Russian Reporter. 2010. February 25. (In Russ.)

17. Baka Peco E. Blood-Feud — Internally Displacing Because of Life Security Threat. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences. 2014;5(4):509—515.

18. Christie N. Conflicts as Property. The British Journal of Criminology. 1977;17(1):1—15.

19. Darovec D. Blood feud as gift exchange: the ritual of humiliation in the customary system of conflict resolution. Acta Histriae. 2017;25(1):57—96. (In Russ.)

20. Fuller Ch. Legal Anthropology, Legal Pluralism and Legal Thought. Anthropology Today. 1994;10(3):9—12.

21. Goldschmidt V. The Greenland Criminal Code and Its Sociological Background. Acta Sociologica. 1956;1(4):217—265.

22. Kerezsi K, Lévay M. Criminology, Crime and Criminal Justice in Hungary. European Journal of Criminology. 2008;5(2):239—260.

23. Lee I. Walking The Line: Pipe and Sweat Ceremonies in Prison. Nova Religio. 2006;9(3):39—60.

24. Zorn J. and Corrin Care J. «Barava tru»: judicial approaches to the pleading and proof of custom in the South Pacific. The International and Comparative Law Quarterly. 2002;51(3):611—639.