Basic Principal About Normative Interpretation Of Economic Crime

Although criminal law is written in clear words, this does not mean that the true meaning of criminal law can be easily discovered according to those words. When judging whether an act is crime, we find it difficult to relate the facts to the norms directly because the criminal law stipulations, especially specific provisions, are rather abstract and general descriptions of specific crimes than definition of particular criminal facts. Therefore, it is very necessary to make reasonable interpretation on criminal law. Generally speaking, no matter economic crime or ordinary crime, they should not be distinguished in the application of interpretative methods and rules. In other words, interpretation of economic crimes should not be independent of the interpretative systems of criminal law. However, since it is common to use blank count to describe elements of economic crime and adopt a dual illegality mode, these elements are interpreted either based on the interpretation of or with special attention to non-criminal legal norms. Hence, more emphasis should be given on some basic values and certain interpretative rules of criminal law when applying and explaining those stipulations regarding economic crime. Furthermore, since the legislative mode of economic crimes is usually criminal group or example, the systematic method should be stressed when interpreting criminal law. Taking all of these into consideration, this dissertation studies the basic principal about normative interpretation of economic crime.It includes four chapters in addition to the introduction with about 170000 words all together. The introduction explains background and significance of this topic and summarizes research methodology and issues. The first chapter discusses the concept, scope and characteristics of economic crime. The following three chapters, which is the main body of this dissertation, study the ideology, rules and specific methods of normative interpretation about economic crime in length, i.e, they discuss those issues like the basic standpoints of normative interpretation about economic crime, its relationship with non-criminal legal norms, how to implement the systematic method when interpreting constitutive elements of economic crime.The first chapter analyzes the subject matter, i.e., economic crime. Because the main topic in this dissertation is studied from the aspect of Hermeneutics, economic crime is considered as an independent type of crime, therefore it is the first priority of this study to define the concept, scope and characteristics of economic crime. Based on the introduction about development and various viewpoints of economic crime from abroad and at home, this chapter concludes that, primarily economic crime is in essence crime against market economy, its specific category and scope should be limited to those crimes disrupting the order of the socialist market economy. Besides, it summarizes such characteristic as statutory crimes, relativity and special structure of illegality, which provides a platform for the latter analysis on this topic.The second chapter elaborates on the author's basic viewpoints about the normative interpretation of economic crime. Based on the introduction to the theoretic disputes between formal interpretation and substantive interpretation of constitutive elements, it considers the system of constitutive elements in our criminal law, combines the characteristics of criminal legal norm, suggests that we should adopt the substantive interpretation theory of criminal law to effectively realize its dual function of protecting society and human rights. As one in the specific provisions in china's criminal law, economic crime has eight categories with more than 100 crimes. Since unlawful economic behaviors are not clearly distinguished from economic crimes, various connections exist among different kinds of economic crime, it is of great importance to stress and implement the substantive interpretation theory when apply normative interpretation to economic crime. Furthermore, detailed discussions are made about some specific requirements to implement the substantive theory, including rules of the substantive interpretation: (1) elevate the constitution of economic crime to the necessary harmful consequence to society required for the criminal persecution; (2) if in line with the normative purpose of criminal law, include those unlawful economic acts as crime; (3) differentiate the scope of economic crime; (4) the substantive interpretation can not fill the loopholes in criminal law.In the meantime, it is discovered that the legislators adopts widely such methods as blank count and reference count to describe criminal constitution when stipulating relevant economic crimes, which results in the indivisible relation between the economic crime and other non-criminal law. It also will give rise to the issue of how to apply relevant non-criminal legal norms when interpreting and applying economic crime. Therefore, the third chapter, after some theoretical analysis on the non-criminal legal norms, focuses on the relationship between the constitution of economic crime and non-criminal legal norms. It is held by the author that when economic criminal norms display a certain reliance on non-criminal legal norms, they have more independence as themselves. In this part, emphasis is given on the separate application of economic criminal norms to non-criminal legal norms. It is put forward here that due to the legislative requirement, normative need of criminal law and legal development, in the process of normative interpretation of economic crime, some concepts and usage in criminal law should not be interpreted according to the relevant laws and administrative regulations. With proper application of interpretative rules, deviation from what laws and administrative regulations explain does not violate the principal of punishing crime according to law. Indicative provisions in non-criminal legal norm to expand the scope of some concept should not be applied to criminal law automatically, including to economic crime. On the other hand, criminal law should be applied to independently. More than this, the establishment of economic crime is not based on the provision of"investigate for criminal responsibility"in non-criminal legal norms, in other words, such a provision is not a precondition to constitute an economic crime, which in the end should be decided by the criminal norms.Finally, as the legislative mode of economic crime is usually example and group, the method of systematic interpretation has a wide application. Therefore, while based on the introduction of general principals about this method, the fourth chapter focuses on its application to those two forms of legislations in economic crime area. It is held by the author that, some rules should be paid attention to when adopting this method in exemplary provision about economic crime, such as that generalized issues should conform to the exemplary case, generalized issues should limit the exemplary case, etc. the usage of this method is further demonstrated by examples such as"settlement certificates of a bank"in crimes of financial fraud,"defrauding loans by any other means"in crime of load defrauding,"other illegal operations that seriously disrupt market order"crimes of disrupting market order. In addition, it is analyzed how to apply systematic interpretation to the group legislation of economic crime. The author concludes that such a legislative mode reflects the need of social life and better demonstrates the principal of punishing crime according to law in that its group characteristic is in agreement with the spirit of explaining stipulation by stipulation contained in the method of systematic interpretation. Hence, more stress should be given to such a method. some rules of the systematic interpretation are further analyzed with relevant cases, such as excluding others by listing one, explicit stipulation can not exclude those implied, etc.