ANALYSIS OF INTERTEMPORAL ISSUES CONNECTED TO THE APPLICATION OF THE INSTITUTION OF CRIMINAL ENFORCEMENT LAW: AN OUTLINE OF THE PROBLEM.

Abstract

From the point of view of the citizen and their fundamental freedoms, the principles behind the operating of criminal laws over time are of primary significance, just as are the inextricably linked principles of resolving socalled collisions of laws in time. Constant legislative change, which entails the possibility of a few legal situations occurring simultaneously at a particular time, means that the topic of intertemporality seems timeless, while theoretical legal considerations acquire an extremely important role in the process of the law’s application. The article refers to institutions of key importance in regard to practice: that of the conditional suspension of a sentence with the postponement of its execution, and the conditional exemption from the rest of a custodial sentence following an intermission in its execution, pursuant to the intertemporal principles of the Criminal Code. Two theses constitute the subject-matter of the reasoning presented in this paper. The first is that alongside norms of a substantive or trial-related character, one should also distinguish an executive norm that requires characteristic intertemporal rules and its own caesura for them, and the second – that when determining the more relevant law for the perpetrator while the court is adjudicating in its examination proceedings, the court of the first or second instance should not take into consideration the institutions of criminal enforcement law, the necessary conditions of which will only come into being following the issuing of a legally-binding judgment. Such institutions include, among others, the conditional suspension of a sentence with the postponement of its execution, and the conditional exemption from execution of the rest of a prison sentence following an intermission in its execution. Although the analysis conducted in this paper applies to the two said institutions, it would seem that its findings may also be extrapolated for interpretation of the remaining institutions of criminal enforcement law, the necessary conditions for the application of which apply to events occurring following the initiation of enforcement proceedings.

Keywords

• The Forms of Probation
• Intertemporal law
• execution of a sentence
• practice of applying the law