The legal principle of the prohibition of retroactive effect of the law in time and its exception: modern interpretation
Authors: Boginich Oleg Leonidovich 
Published: January 2025

The article considers the prospects of extending the exception to the principle of prohibition of retroactive effect of the law in time to legal relations related to the improvement of the legal status of individuals and legal entities. The relevant activity of law-making and law-enforcement bodies is analyzed. Both positive and negative features of such activity are indicated. In the context of the above, the genesis of the emergence of the legal principle of the prohibition of retroactive effect of the law in time and its modification regarding the exception to it in modern conditions are investigated. It is claimed that the principle of prohibiting the retroactive effect of the law in time and an exception to it was normatively recorded for the first time in the Criminal Code of France in 1810, where Article 65 provided that no crime or misdemeanor can be forgiven, and the punishment is mitigated, except for cases where the new law abolishes criminal liability for a specific act or allows for a lighter punishment to be applied to it. Over time, this idea was reflected in international political and legal documents. Thus, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights included a provision that stipulated that if a lighter punishment is established by law after the commission of a crime, the effect of this law shall apply to this criminal (Article 15). At the same time, already in the 90s of the 20th century, the national legal systems of individual countries went further and extended the effect of this principle not only to the sphere of legal responsibility, but also to legal relations related to the improvement of the legal status of individuals and legal entities. For example, the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia of 1991 reflected the provision according to which laws and other acts cannot have retroactive effect, except in cases where it is in favor of the citizen. A similar provision is contained in Article 149 of the 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan, which stipulates that normative legal acts that improve the legal status of individuals or legal entities, exempt from responsibility or mitigate it, have retroactive effect. In the context of the above issues, examples of judicial enforcement of the specified principle and exceptions to it are considered. In particular, it refers to the decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine dated 04/05/2001 and the special opinion of the member of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, Professor of Law M.I. Kozyubry, who noted that under certain conditions, laws and other normative legal acts may not be retroactive only in the case of mitigating or canceling the responsibility of a person, and it is also allowed in cases when these acts are aimed at improving the legal status of individuals and legal entities: they contribute to the exercise of rights and freedoms, release from obligations, in particular, the payment of taxes or reduce the latter. The specified trend of legal regulation, from the author’s point of view, can be identified as the humanization of law, when a person, the satisfaction of his rights and interests really become the goal of the existence of states, the potential of which is aimed not at limiting human rights by establishing their limits, but primarily at expanding opportunities their implementation (increasing rights, reducing obligations) by providing retroactive effect of the law to which it gives permission.

Key words: The legal principle of prohibiting retroactive effect of the law in time. Retroactive effect of a law that improves the legal position of individuals or legal entities.