Issues of Distinguishing Abuse of Official Authority from Exceeding Official Powers

Abstract

This article is devoted to the issue of distinguishing abuse of official authority and exceeding official powers. The public danger of the crimes under consideration lies not only in the obvious negative socially dangerous consequences, but also in the formation of a negative attitude of society towards the entire system of state and municipal services, generates nihilism in the society, and routinizes criminality in public authorities in the public consciousness. The paper analyzes the stances of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, the established judicial practice, identifies the most important problems of qualifying these crimes, provides the academics’ opinions on the issues under consideration, and proposes a new version of Articles 285, 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.Working on the paper the author employed both general and specific academic techniques, including the analysis of judicial practice and statistical data of the Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, as well as a comparison of approaches to understanding the nature of the crimes under consideration, their differentiation, and, finally, legal modeling techniques were applied.Based on the results of the study, new versions of Articles 285, 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation have been suggested, containing more explicit distinguishing features. The adoption of the proposed amendments to the provisions of Articles 285, 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation will simplify the process of qualifying a person’s actions, develop a more unified judicial practice, prevent possible errors in qualification, and therefore contribute to a more just punishment.