JUSTICE AND LAW: THE ORIGINS AND FORMATION OF LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY

Abstract

The article studies the evolution of the institution of legal responsibility as a fundamental category of the modern legal system in a historical and legal aspect. The development of ideas about legal responsibility from ancient civilizations to the present day is analyzed, the transformation of its philosophical, moral, religious and legal foundations is highlighted. Special attention is paid to ancient thinkers (Democritus, Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), who considered responsibility as an internal quality of a person, its conscious choice and the interaction of the individual and society, establishing moral and legal criteria for assessing human behavior. The formation of Roman jurisprudence, the isolation of law as an autonomous science, as well as an approach to legal responsibility based on rationalism and the principles of justice are investigated. The influence of Christian theology in the Middle Ages, when the concept of responsibility was formed through religious norms and moral restrictions, as well as the Reformation and humanistic ideas of the Renaissance, which contributed to the restoration of the concept of individual freedom of action and personal responsibility before the law and society, is analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the development of legal thought in the era of Modern Times and the Enlightenment, the contribution of such thinkers as T. Hobbes, J. Locke, G. Grotius, C. Beccaria, J.-J. Rousseau, to the formation of the principles of expediency, proportionality, legality and humanism in legal responsibility. The formation of post-classical jurisprudence and positivist doctrine in the works of I. Bentham, G. Kelsen and J. Mill, who defined legal responsibility as a mandatory reaction to a violation of legal norms, associated with the freedom of choice of a person's behavior and the proportionality of punishment, is considered.

The article traces the formation of the principles of legal responsibility in connection with the development of the theory of state and law, namely the relationship between the freedom of action of an individual and legal restrictions, the effectiveness of justice in determining the limits of responsibility, the correlation of moral and legal criteria, as well as the historical transformation of approaches to the institution of responsibility from a moral-religious to a legal understanding. It is emphasized that legal responsibility is a key mechanism for ensuring the rule of law and the stable functioning of the legal system, which unites all spheres of social relations.