The Discussion Of Errors In Cognition Of Illegality In Criminal Law

With the rapid development of economy and the emergence of new things,while our life has become more and more convenient,the social risks we face are also increasing.In order to control social risks,the charges in the law are increasing.Most of these new charges are statutory crimes,such as administrative crimes,economic crimes,environmental crimes,and social security crimes.Professor Chu Huaizhi once said “we should face up to the era of statutory crimes”.In such a background,many complicated laws are unknown to people.In combination with the relevant cases in China's judicial practice,such as “Henan Farmers Catching Toad Case”,“Yang Fengshen Making Fireworks Case”,“Men in Shenzhen Selling Domestic Parrots Case” and so on,we are not difficult to find “errors in cognition of illegality”embedded in many cases.However,since our country still sticks to the principle of“Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse”,judges tend to determine the conviction and sentencing when trying some cases.Although it meets the legal requirements,it brings harm to the common people's legal emotion,and even causes some social negative effects.How should we deal with this?Through the study of other countries' handling of illegality cognition errors,the author finds that many countries' jurists admit that the offenders' responsibilities canbe diminished with this.The “Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse” is not an absolute principle,Besides,many countries have made explicit provisions that the responsibility can be exempted or diminished based on this practice in criminal laws.Given this,although each country is different,there are still many commonalities.Our country can draw lessons from the treatment and application of errors in cognition of illegality in foreign countries and apply its effect on conviction and sentencing to the criminal judicial practice in our country on the basis of our social environment.After clarifying the reasonableness of the influence of illegality cognition on conviction,this paper discusses and expounds the theories related to the standard of misjudgment of illegality,and forms the standard of judgments I agree with.Then,a distinction will be made between cognition errors in fact and illegality.In the end,personal argument will be concluded on the basis of the related foreign theories about the influence of errors in cognition of illegality on conviction and sentencing.The inevitable illegality cognition error is to exclude criminal offences,that is,the actor does not constitute a crime in this case,and the incompletely unavoidable recognition error is subject to a lighter punishment or be exempted from punishment according to the degree of its error.The avoidable one is to determine the conviction and punishment according to the law.To sum up,this article mainly takes the classic cases of illegality cognition in our country as the starting point,clarify the focus and the problem of the dispute,and combine the relevant theories,laws and cases about the mistake of illegality cognition at home and abroad,and proves that the mistake of illegality affects the application of the conviction to the judicature of our country.It is suggested that China should take it as a basis for conviction,so as to ease the tense relationship between state public power and civil liberties.