Rikosoikeudellinen laillisuusperiaate ja rikossäännösten täsmällisyys – Kuinka yksityiskohtaisia rikossäännösten tulee olla?
Avainsanat:
rikosoikeus, laillisuusperiaate, lainsäädäntöprosessi, rikostunnusmerkistöAbstrakti
The principle of legality in criminal law and the precision of criminal provisions – How detailed should criminal provisions be?
The article examines the principle of legality and especially the requirement that an offence must be clearly defined in the law. The main question is what kind of preconditions this requirement sets for the formulation of criminal provisions. In order to make the consideration more concrete, the article reviews criminal provisions and legislative processes related to sexual harassment, bribery of members of parliament and so-called self-laundering, i.e., situations in which the same person perpetrates both the primary offence and the money laundering offence. The main conclusion is that the assessment of the Constitutional Law Committee and the Legal Affairs Committee regarding the clarity of criminal provisions has not been entirely consistent. However, a constant feature has been the critical attitude towards using elements open to interpretation in criminal provisions. Therefore, there has been a tendency to clarify criminal provisions by including additional criteria, for example a requirement of abstract danger. In some cases, these added elements have been largely empty of content and, therefore, the precision achieved by adding details may be illusory. Striving for strict legal precision has also led to repeated amendments of law as the selected formulations did not meet the requirements set by international conventions or cover all the activities that require prohibition. Regarding the precision of criminal provisions, the Finnish legislator seems to be stricter than the European Court of Human Rights, which has stated that the need to avoid excessive rigidity and to keep pace with changing circumstances means that laws are inevitably couched in terms which, to a greater or lesser extent, are vague and require interpretation.
