This dissertation discusses the role of morality in defining criminal offenses and in justifying the use of penal repression, with particular focus on the question of whether protection of morality is a legitimate aim of individual incriminations as well as of criminal law in general. In the beginning, author’s understanding of the concept of legitimacy is explained, emphasizing how it is embedded in the current historical circumstances and defined by the existing social order, and various formal and substantive forms of legitimacy of legal norms are presented. A short analysis of harm principle and protection of legal goods is presented, based on which some conclusions are made regarding the appropriate approach to defining criminal offenses. This is followed by an explanation of the close interrelatedness between morality and law, whereupon the term legal moralism is introduced as a theory of incrimination that considers immorality of an act to be a justifiable, though not necessarily sufficient reason for a society to proclaim that act a criminal offense. Some of the most common arguments for and against legal moralism are analysed and a few current examples of moralism, legal and otherwise, are highlighted, based on which certain conclusions are drawn about the legitimacy of incriminations that protect morality.
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