Criminal law traditionally divides endangerment offences into two categories. Concrete endangerment offences involve an imminent danger to a legal good, while abstract endangerment offences suppose a theoretical possibility of an impairment of the legal good. However, a detailed analysis of the special part of the Criminal Code shows that some criminal offences cannot be unambiguously classified in either of these categories, as they contain features of both. Such considerations have led to the creation of a new form of endangerment offences in German criminal law theory – a potential endangerment offence. Such criminal offences require that the offender's conduct is “capable” of impairing a legal good, and can be recognised particularly by the term "capable" (“geeignet” in the German-speaking countries) or the term "may" (“lahko” in Slovenia). Potential endangerment offences are characterised by a mixture of concrete and abstract elements: the danger is assessed by the judge, but it is an assessment of a general (and not an actual) danger. This has implications for a number of doctrinal issues in criminal law, including issues of attempt and in particular impossible attempt, causality, and culpability. Potential endangerment offences gained recognition in Slovenian criminal law in 2019, when the Supreme Court of the Republic of Slovenia declared the criminal offence under Article 297 of the Criminal Code, which criminalises hate speech, to be a potential endangerment offence. Nonetheless, they remain one of the least explored issues of the general notion of a criminal offense. Filling this gap is therefore the aim of this Master's thesis.
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