Criminal Law Error in the Regulation of the New Criminal Code

摘要

With regard to the effects of the criminal law error, in European legal systems there are two orientations. In some countries, the criminal law error has no effect on criminal liability, it being believed that incognizance of the criminal law cannot be invoked (nemo censetur ignorare legem). Once adopted, the criminal law applies to all its recipients, regardless of whether they actually know the law. The establishment of an absolute presumption of knowledge of the criminal law is, however, susceptible to many critics, being actually abandoned in most European countries. Thus it should be noted that this concept appeared in Antiquity, in not very numerous communities, communities where people participated effectively in drafting the laws. At the present, in a time when we are faced with a genuine legislative inflation, with the criminalizing of acts committed in various fields which until recently were not even regulated, knowledge of the law by anyone appears more like a fiction lacking in realistic support. Basically, it is sometimes possible for a person who commits an offence under criminal law to not know that the respective act is prohibited. The role of this paper is precisely to examine the circumstances in which the criminal law error can be invoked after the entry into force of the new Criminal Code, and to analyze the implications of this amendment.