CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES OF INDIVIDUALIZATION OF LEGAL LIABILITY OF A PERSON IN ASPECT OF THEORY OF CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL LIABILITY

Abstract

The scientific article is the author’s attempt to overcome current in modern legal science terminological and content uncertainty of the constitutional principle of individualization of legal liability of a person. Based on the analysis of various judgments of scientists as to understanding of the principles of legal liability, the author came to the following interim conclusions concerning the studied constitutional principle of the legal liability in terms of terminological correctness of its wording and content: 1) taking into account the constitutional certainty of the principle enshrined in p. 2, Art. 61 of the Basic Law of the Ukrainian state, under which the legal liability of a person has an individual character, we consider it methodologically incorrect and, therefore, inadmissible other verbal formulations of this idea that are not identical to it, such as "personal nature of liability" or "individualization of punishment"; 2) We do not deny an objective and necessary connection of the studied fundamental idea of legal liability with such its principles as appropriateness and fairness, but we consider it to be reasonable the thesis about the relative autonomy of the principle of individualization of legal liability of a person mainly through its constitutional recognition; 3) interpretation by scholars of the idea of individualization of legal liability of a person is carried out mainly in the aspect of criminal and administrative liability of a person, because only a person is recognized as a subject of a crime and as a rule, a person is the subject of an administrative offense. That is why lawyers emphasize the need for individualization of penalties and punishment, taking into account the severity of the offense, personality of an offender, the circumstances mitigating or aggravating his/her guilt. It is noted that the principle of individualization of legal liability of a person that was officially consolidated in p. 2, Art. 61 of the Basic Law of the Ukrainian state is consistent with the concept of constitutional and legal responsibility only in terms of individual subjects to constitutional law, that is, citizens of the state, foreign citizens and stateless people who own constitutional ability to be responsible for committed wrongs and to whom sanctions of constitutional and legal norms for committed constitutional offense can be applied.