Selected issues of normative adjustments and application practice of generalextenuating circumstances in Czechoslovakia 1918–1938. 1. Normativity, itsevolution and context

Abstract

The series of articles deals with the legal regulation of general mitigating circumstances as an important
criminal law institute influencing especially the amount of punishment imposed in interwar
Czechoslovakia in 1918–1938. It provides an analysis of both the normative form of the institutes examined at the time and their application in a pilot study of the decision-making practice of the
Czechoslovak courts. In doing so, it notes the conceptual differences regarding the general mitigating
circumstances and their application in the law of the Czech lands and in the law in force in the territory
of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus, when, as a result of legal pluralism, the form of criminal law differed
in the various territories of the Czechoslovakia, which affected not only generally binding normative
acts, but also the very decision-making and the form of the so-called living law, and thus legal certainty
and legitimate expectations. The series of articles draws attention to the correspondences and
differences in the identification of general mitigating circumstances in the Czech lands and in Slovakia
and Subcarpathian Rus, and to the consequences that this led to in their application in practice,
including shortcomings and errors. It also draws attention to the contemporary principles of
interpretation related to the application of the norms and principles of general mitigating
circumstances and, more broadly, of criminal law in the years 1918–1938, to the elements of similarity
and possible unification within the judicial decisions on general mitigating circumstances, as well as to
the differences between theories and norms on the one hand and the actual decision-making
concerning (not only) general mitigating circumstances in contemporary criminal law on the other. In
doing so, it does not neglect the influence of extra-legal, especially political, considerations on this
decision-making practice. The series of articles thus not only provides a thorough introduction to the
historical roots of one of the important legal institutes still existing in the law of the Czech Republic and
Slovakia today, but also enables a better understanding of how the legal order actually functioned at
that time. Due to its size, the text is divided into two consecutive articles, one of which is devoted to
the normative form and the other to the application practice related to the issue under study. This first
article first presents the legislation and jurisprudence on general mitigating circumstances in the Czech
lands and Slovakia between 1918-1938 in relation to the reception and development of criminal law
regulations governing general mitigating circumstances in the interwar Czechoslovakia.