Constitutional Basis of Democratic Rights and Criminal Law Protection

Author: Wei Dong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: The practice of democracy has shown that all civilized nations in the world simultaneously confirm democratic rights in their constitutions and guarantee them under criminal law, in order to effectively and truly protect the democratic rights of citizens. It is clear that this is a research question worth summarizing. It is not only a concern of criminal law, but also a matter that constitutional law should care about, and it is even a major issue that the entire theoretical community and even the whole society must be concerned about. This book is a theoretical and practical exploration of such a very important issue. Therefore, the author of this book pays special attention to studying the problem from the perspective of the constitutional foundation of democratic rights and the criminal law protection of democratic rights, systematically and comprehensively elaborating on the theoretical definition, constitutional confirmation, and basic features of criminal law protection of democratic rights. At the beginning of the book, the author explores the basic connotation and main scope of democratic rights, and on this basis, examines the constitutional declaration of democratic rights in Western countries, as well as China's constitutional confirmation of democratic rights. Next, from the perspective of comparative research, the author systematically examines the criminal law protection of democratic rights in foreign countries, covering aspects such as the establishment of charges for offenses against democratic rights and systematic arrangements, the constitutive elements and construction of descriptions of offenses against democratic rights, and the configuration of statutory penalties. Correspondingly, the author also elaborates on China's criminal law protection of democratic rights, including the legislative evolution of offenses against democratic rights in China, the concept and constitutive characteristics of offenses against democratic rights, and the configuration of statutory penalties. The author takes the provisions of the current Criminal Law of China on offenses against democratic rights as the main line, systematically and specifically studying the crime of inciting national hatred and discrimination, the crime of publishing works discriminating against or insulting ethnic minorities, the crime of illegally depriving citizens of religious belief freedom, the crime of infringing on the customs of ethnic minorities, the crime of infringing on the freedom of correspondence, the crime of privately opening, concealing, or destroying mail and telegrams, the crime of retaliating and harming others, the crime of retaliating against accounting and statistical personnel, and the crime of disrupting elections. When discussing each specific charge, the author pays attention to elaborating from the perspective of criminal law theoretical research the theoretical issues and constitutional confirmation of the specific democratic right involved in that charge, and then explains the constitutional foundation and criminal law principles of that charge from the requirements of constitutional criminal law. This feature of the format determines that the book has considerable theoretical characteristics. So far, there has been no monograph that has systematically and profoundly elaborated on offenses against democratic rights. This book can be said to have set a precedent in this regard and has its unique theoretical value.