The ideas of professor Mikhail Chubynskyi on the historical (genetic) method and follow-up in criminal legal research at the end of XIX – early of XX century

Abstract

The paper raises the question of a modern role of methodology in criminal law and criminal law studies. The authors reveals the essence of methodology in criminal law and its significance approaches to methodology definitions and its current state. In modern conditions of development of legal science, including sciences of a criminal law cycle, its methodological problems make one of the basic directions of carrying out scientific researches by domestic and foreign researchers.

Methodology of the modern science of criminal law is a complex and multi-faceted institution that covers: a) problems of a structure of scientific knowledge in criminal law and scientific theories (constructions); b) laws of appearance, functioning and changes of scientific legal theories and doctrines in criminal law; c) a conceptual frame of criminal law; d) the structure and operative system of research methods applied in the criminal law; e) analysis of a criminal law language.

The paper is devoted to an analysis of methodological problems of a criminal law, namely, an establishing process of historical method in the writings of scientists at the end of XIX – beginning of XX century, and its role in studying succession issues in a criminal legal science. The implementation of a serious theoretical study of any legal phenomenon is impossible without the use of historical (genetic) method of cognition. This method allows identifying trends in the development of legislation, to trace its relationship with the socio-economic conditions of society and the state, based on the analysis of criminal law of previous years and the practice of its application. It reveals mainly those genetic connections and relations of the object of the developing legal reality, concrete conditions of its formation and historical development.

The use of the historical (genetic) method of scientific knowledge does not draw on a regression of criminal legislation, not a return to old forms, but on the contrary, it is the necessary condition for strong progress.

The paper focuses on the fact that the ideas of using the historical (genetic) method in the domestic science of criminal law did not arise suddenly, they had the origins of history in significant changes in criminal legislation in the world, thereby dictating to scientists their conditions and requirements for conducting modern criminal law research. In the future, methodological foundations of criminal law should be associated with an ability and cognitive perspective to combine methodological approaches.