The 41th academic salon of law school was held successfully on March 1th at Room 307, KoguanBuiding. The theme of the salon was “Reaffirming of legality”. Professor Liang Genlin from Peking University Law School was the speaker. other professors also attended.

First of all, Professor Liang Genlin affirmed the progress of the principle of legality in Article 3 of the Criminal Law of the PRC, which was a major breakthrough in the Criminal Code, and was worthy of recognition in legislation and judicial practice in ordinary criminal cases.

Then Professor Liang Genlin clarified the importance of reaffirming legality from four aspects including the rule of law, the global trend, theory of criminal law and social transformation.In his view, the Third and the Fourth Plenary Session proposed the construction of rule of law in China and comprehensively promoted in the rule of law, which put forward further requests to the content, not only to scientific legislation, but to good governance. In addition, there was a big gap between the third article of the Criminal Law of the PRC and the criminal laws and the development of the theories of criminal law in other countries. The objective needs of judicial practice in social transformation stage also put forward higher requirements to us.

After that, Prof. Liang further explained how should we reaffirm the principle of legality. He pointed out that the third article of Chinese criminal law should be based on social needs, and should make clear that the fundamental purpose of legality is to limit judicial discretion. Subsequently, on the theory that legality "not only need to reiterate, but also need to repeat," Prof. Liang gave a deeper analysis. He stressed that in the traditional sense, "rules" represents the core claims of the criminal law, and the "rule of good law" was a further enhance in the legislative level. Considering the specific dispute, we should prompt the country to be in "good law and good governance".

Finally, the participants, Prof.CheHao, Shen Kui, Xue Jun, Zhang Qi etc. asked questions on specific problemssuch as specific cases of legality, the definition of public places and the spatial impacts of citizens’ exercising their constitutional rights,Prof.Liang answered one by one.Thus, the salon ended.

In this academic salon, Professor Liang Genlin described what the principle of legality was, why should we reaffirm and how to reaffirm, and further proposed the restatement of legality. He pointed out that the discussion of different laws should always follow the principle of order and unity of law. The salon would help teachers understand the principle of legality better, and also provided a train of thought for the development of our criminal law.

Translated by:Gao jian