Strict Liability In Criminal Law

With the highly modern industrial society, economic activities became abnormally frequent and complicated. With the rapid growth of high-risk industry, increasingly serious pollution and the growing number of the surge in crime, Strict Liability came into being. Thus, Strict Liability system is suitable to the requirements of preventing and keeping within limits crimes which endanger public social welfare. These crimes are not only very serious in the Anglo-American countries, but also in our country they will increasingly become a serious social problem with our socio-economic development. For these crimes, it's very difficult for the State Judiciary to prove whether subjective psychological sin is intentional or negligent for every case, even more probably because of difficult burden of proof crimes are indulgenced. Therefore, I believe that Strict Liability is very useful and meaningful for theory and practice of China's Criminal Law in preventing and controlling crime against public welfare. In this paper, I will discuss Strict Liability and relevant issues, and I hope this can be useful for improving China's Criminal Law System.In this paper, in addition to the introduction and conclusion, it is divided into five parts, which are as follow:Part I: Overview of Strict Liability. In this part, I briefly expound the evolution process of Strict Liability in the long river of history, and from this it can be seen that Strict Liability is also constantly improving with the continuous development of the community. At the same time I give an own definition of Strict Liability with the reference of different explanations at home and abroad, distinguish the related concepts with each other and classify them with combination of Anglo-American Criminal Law Theory.Part II: The theoretical basis for Strict Liability. In this part, I roundly take apart the rationality of Strict Liability form the perspective of Criminal Law Theory and propos its four theoretical bases. The four theoretical bases are the social and public welfare theory, the prevention of possible hazards theory, the economic theory of Criminal Law and the reward responsibility theory. These theories expound the rationality of the existence of Strict Liability from different aspects, which provides the theoretical support for the rationality of Strict Liability's existence for a long time.Part III: The dispute of Strict Liability's retention or abolition and its prospects. This part sets forth different views of different scholars for Strict Liability, which could be classified into three attitudes: affirmation, negativism and eclecticism. Here I put forward my own standpoint: in my opinion we can not simply affirm or negate Strict Liability, by contraries, we should look on Strict Liability in a dialectic view. And form the actuality of Strict Liability in Anglo-American countries, I think it has a broad prospects and a well arena in the future.Part IV: Strict Liability and China's Criminal Law. This part is the core content of this paper and can be divided into two levels: first level demonstrates whether there is the item of Strict Liability in China's current Criminal Law and analyzes some scholars'perspectives. As a result, I believe that there are some items about Strict Liability in the existing Criminal Law. In second level, starting with the integration problem of Strict Liability and China's current Criminal Law, I carry through a comprehensive analysis of realistic background of the introduction of Strict Liability to our country. And I think both from theoretical point and actualism Strict Liability should be included in our Criminal Law Theory and used for us.Part V: The concept of Strict Liability in China's Criminal Law. This part discuss some measure should be adopted in order to properly use Strict Liability to serve our jural society construction. We should develop the good qualities of Strict Liability and discard its shortcomings. What's more, we also should restrict some aspects form accusal, crucifixion to defendant probative requests. In addition, I bring forward some concrete legislative proposals to our country, which are as follows: adding the new concept of strict liability committed in general provisions, at the same time setting up strict liability committed in sub-provisions, which mainly applies to the crime of endangering public safety and social welfare.