The Death Penalty as a Form of Monopoly on Violence

Discussion of the death penalty only as a legal category does not lead to a correct understanding of its phenomenon and leads to endless debate on the admissibility/inadmissibility of using this form of criminal punishment that have been proceeding for centuries. The question of the death penalty application should be considered from the standpoint of interests of the state sovereignty that is characterized by not only independence of a state in the international arena, but also by its supremacy within the country. The supremacy, in its turn, is provided by the state monopoly on the use of legitimate violence, one form of which includes a criminal punishment as a specific means of combating crime. Accordingly, in case of refusal of the death penalty application, the range of criminal law actions is deprived of the toughest and the most serious in its social and legal implications individual measure of state coercion and due to this a political organization no longer has the "monopoly on violence" in a society and cannot be considered as an absolute sovereign. Such an approach to understanding the nature of the death penalty is consistent with an approach that is widespread in sociology according to which a state as a "monopoly on violence"; under this definition the legitimate use of violence is assigned only to a state. The author confirms this statement by means of the research carried out by French philosopher Michel Foucault, who analyzing the mechanism of public execution comes to conclusions that public execution is not just an act of justice, but demonstration of power and absolute sovereign authority. With this understanding of the nature of the death penalty, the recent legal approaches, developed by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in cases with an international law element when the Court recommends to take into account provisions of the RF Constitution that entrench the sovereignty of Russia, supremacy and supreme legal force of the Constitution of the Russian Federation in the Russian legal system, provide for conditions for the application of the death penalty. In this context, the paper gives a new assessment of traditional arguments of the opponents of the death penalty, such as; 1) the death penalty is a barbaric, anachronistic and absurd measure; it runs counter to the ideas of progress and civilization; 2) only God has the right to take away life, because He gives it to a man; a state may not do this, which means that the death penalty is deeply immoral; 3) the death penalty as a form of criminal punishment has an extremely low preventive value, so it is not needed.

death penalty, criminal punishment, contradiction to the ideas of progress and civilization, death penalty and religion, preventive value, monopoly on violence, sovereignty, state power, Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, act of justice, death penalty, criminal punishment, contradiction to the ideas of progress and civilization, death penalty and religion, preventive value, monopoly on violence, sovereignty, state power, Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, act of justice

1. Алексеев Н. Н. Русский народ и государство. - М., 1998.

2. Антонян Ю. М., Бородин С. В. Преступное поведение и психические аномалии / под ред. В. Н. Кудрявцева. - М., 1998.

3. Беккария Ч. О преступлениях и наказаниях. - М., 1995.

4. Дугин А. Основы геополитики. - М., 2000.

5. Кистяковский А. Ф. Исследование о смертной казни. - Тула, 2000.

6. Милюков С. Ф. Российское уголовное законодательство: опыт критического анализа. - СПб., 2000.

7. Михлин А. С. Высшая мера наказания: история, современность, будущее. - М., 2000.

8. Панарин А. С. Искушение глобализмом. - М., 2002.

9. Панарин А. С. Россия в циклах мировой истории. - М., 1999.

10. Смертная казнь: за и против / сост. О. Ф. Шишов, Т. С. Парфенова. - М., 1989.

11. Стручков Н. А. Уголовная ответственность и ее реализация в борьбе с преступностью. - Саратов, 1978.

12. Фуко М. Надзирать и наказывать: рождение тюрьмы / пер. с фр. - М., 1999.