The attempt to reform the Czechoslovak criminal law - the draft of the Penal Code from the period of 1921-1926
Abstract
The paper is dedicated to an attempt to reform the Czechoslovak criminal law, which was represented by a draft of the Penal Code from the period of 1921-1926. After the rise of the Czechoslovak Republic (1918) a commission for the reform of the Penal Code was established at the Ministry of Justice.
The members of this commission were the two key figures of the Czechoslovak criminal law science at that time, prof. August Miřička and prof.
Jaroslav Kallab. The result of their work and of the commission was a draft of the Penal Code (1921), which had the task to protect the society from crime more effectively.
The commission brought several reform proposals, for instance, it emphasized the importance of the motive of the offender for the assessment of criminal act, or it suggested the traditional bi-partition of the forms of criminal guilt be replaced by a sharply delineated tri-partition. The paper also aims to analyse the background of the origin of the Protection of the Republic Act (1923), which adoption was influenced by the assassination of the former Czechoslovak Minister of Finance dr.
Alois Rašín. The paper concludes with the fate of the reform draft of the Penal Code, its amendment and improvement (1926), and the intention of its enactment (1928), which, however, - for several reasons - failed to materialize.