宽严相济刑事政策应回归为司法政策

宽严相济刑事政策在最初提出时具有明显的司法性特征,但随着实践中从司法理解向立法思路的拓展,该政策完成了向"基本刑事政策"的转变。然而,这种扩张解释没有经过系统论证,也不具有全面充分的理由。宽严相济可以在古代的"宽猛相济"中追溯渊源,其中的"宽"就是以对猛政纠偏的面目出现的。当代宽严相济刑事政策的提出,既是对中国法制传统的弘扬,更是对以前过度强调"严打"的纠正。立法的特点及基本品质表明,宽严相济刑事政策不可能直接表现为立法政策;认为该政策涵括了立法政策,会导致以下逻辑困境:无法正确处理和惩办与宽大相结合政策之间的关系;可能导致重复评价或政策的虚无化;立法有自身的品质要求,其缘由是复杂的,并非宽严相济所能涵盖;如果旧的法律规范已经被新法修改,势必不存在所谓"相济"问题。宽严相济刑事政策应回归为司法政策。

Repositioning the Criminal Policy of Tempering Justice with Mercy as a Judicial Policy

Initially the criminal policy of tempering justice with mercy had distinct judicial characteristics, whether in terms of its written expressions and in terms of its practical application. However, with its expansion from judicial understanding to legislation thinking, this policy has been turned into a "basic criminal policy". At the beginning, there had been small-scale and sporadic debates in the theoretical circle on the appropriateness of this transformation. However, ultimately these debates were ignored and the original aim of the policy was not adhered to. The expensive interpretation of the policy has not been systematically demonstrated and lacks sufficient justification. The criminal law dominated by policy shows the same characteristics, that is, dominance of power is becoming increasingly apparent, little consideration is given to the procedural and stability requirements on legislation, frequent revision of law becomes a rule, and there have been numerous examples of legislation made on the basis of policies in the process of the revision of the Criminal Law. The main characteristics and basic quality of legislation indicate that it is impossible for criminal policy of tempering justice with mercy to be directly expressed in legislation. The argument that this policy is also a legislative policy leads to the following logic dilemmas, that is, the difficulty to coordinate the relationship between this policy and the policy of combining punishment with leniency, the repetitive assessment or nihilization of the policy, the impossibility for this policy to cover all the quality requirements and complicated grounds of legislation, and the loss of the ground for "tempering" after the replacement of old norms by new ones.