ON UNDERSTANDING THE INITIAL STAGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE LIGHT OF STUDYING OF LEGAL CONSEQUENCES

The purpose of the study is to identify and describe changes that arise in the legal status of a person immediately at the time he commits an offense and that exist before the application of coercive measures against him, due to the fact of committing an unlawful act. The basis of the research methodology was a constructivist understanding of legal reality, which made it possible to determine the object-subject area of research, as well as a dialectical approach, within the framework of which changes in the legal statuses of the recipients of protective norms that have existed since the entry into force of such norms were studied formally, legally and systemically and functionally (or the arrival of the addressee in the territory where the norm applies) and until the termination of the legal consequences specified in the sanction (for example, expungement or expungement of a criminal record). It is concluded that legal responsibility for committing an offense takes the form of a relative protective legal relationship between the person who committed the offense and the subject who has the right to establish his identity and apply the consequences. On the substantive side, legal responsibility arises as part of the legal status of the person who committed the offense, as a potential legal burden. It exists in the legal status of the specified person from the moment of commission of the offense and until the occurrence of one of two legal facts: either the fact of the beginning of the application of necessary measures of influence to the person, implying the emergence of corresponding rights and obligations, or until the appearance of circumstances that cease the existence of legal responsibility. The term “potential legal encumbrance” itself, as its abbreviated version “potential encumbrance”, is proposed as one of the possible ones to denote the described phenomenon.