A Study On Identification Criteria Of Legal Interest

The concept of legal interest is fundamental in the criminal field. It hasbeen widely acknowledged that the purpose of criminal law is to protect legalinterest and that the violation of it embodies the essence of a crime. Evolvingwith the development of modern criminal law, the theory of legal interest hasbeen studied and identified in terms of its concept and contents by scholars incriminal law since it was introduced into China in the expectation that it will beintegrated into the context of the domestic criminal law in China. Nevertheless,more often than not, the arguments were too abstract and principled to explicitlydefine the specific contents of legal interest. Foremost, this thesis construessuch elements as concept, contents, and functions of legal interest, and thendemonstrates the specific contents of it in the perspective of identificationcriteria. Besides, combining practical applications, the thesis also accounts forthese criteria in order to concretely define the scope of legal interest so that thetheory of it can be improved and criminal law can be a better protector of legalinterest.The thesis comprises three parts:Part One summarizes the concept of legal interest. First of all, theformation and development of it is reviewed in chronological order and theconcept of legal interest is defined based on the legal context in China. Apartfrom that, through comparative analyses of various arguments about the essenceof crimes, this thesis justifies the violation of legal interest being the nature of acrime and elaborates the relationship between legal interest and object of crimeas well as social detriment in criminal law in China. In addition, the thesisillustrates separately the wrongdoing evaluation function, criminal policyfunction, and interpretation function of legal interest. Finally, based on theprincipal theory mentioned above, this part ascertains the meaning of theidentification criteria of legal interest. Moreover, the significance of thetheoretical research and judicial practice of legal interest is also stated in thethesis.Part Two mainly discusses the identification criteria of legal interest and itspractical applications. This part elaborates the contents and requirements of the identification criteria of legal interest, including standards of objectivity,legality, specificity, degree, feasibility, and the accordance with criminal law,and expounds these criteria taking the disposal of relevant behaviors in judicialpractice into account. Furthermore, the interrelationship of the criteria isidentified as being coherent and dependent on one another.Part Three deals with the difficulties and solutions of the identificationcriteria of legal interest. On the one hand, this part figures out that theimpediment to the identification criteria of legal interest lies in theincompatibility of the criteria and the querying of the principle ofindividualization of punishment. On the other hand, as for the problemsmentioned above, the present author comes up with such feasible solutions asthe principle that responsibility and the punishment should adapt each other, thecomparison principle, and the efficiency principle.