| The principle of definitude derived from the guidance that crimes and punishments are all stipulated by law, which has a long history and is of great significance to criminal law legislation and practice of criminal justice. China formally established the principle of legality while on the other hand relevant in-depth research was conducted. However, as a branch of the principle of legality,the principle of definitude has been widely ignored in both legislation and practice.There are many ambiguities in the criminal law, which goes against the principle of definitude and leads to practical difficulties, imposing a negative influence on the fairness, stability and authority of the law to some extent. Clear provision of the criminal law serves better to divide crime from non-crime, as well as this crime from that crime, limit the penalty power and constrain the unscrupulous abuse of discretionary power by judges, so as to protect individual rights and freedom of action. However, absolutely definite provision of the criminal law will lead to inflexibility,cumbersome formulation, frequent revision and other defects such as failure in terms of maintaining justice of certain cases. Besides, the inherited vagueness of language and the limitation of human knowledge also determine that the criminal law cannot be completely defined. Therefore, criminal law can achieve explicit only on relative terms. In judging whether or not one certain provision of criminal law is definite, one shall first base his judgement on the possibility of people of average cognitive ability can anticipate the consequence of his own behavior, while considering the possibility of legal professionals being absolutely clear.China can achieve the clarity of the norm of criminal law and solve the plight of judicial practice by improving the legislative language of the criminal law,enhancing criminal legislation, regulating the interpretation of criminal law and implementing the case-based criminal guidance system. |
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