Protective purpose of the standard

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The protective purpose of the standard is a legal term from jurisprudence . The question of the protective purpose of the norm is part of the teleological interpretation of the law. In criminal law, but also when examining claims for damages under civil law, it represents a limitation criterion for questions of causality and attribution .

The protective purpose of the standard includes that the relevant standard should protect precisely against the damage that the (in itself) illegal behavior caused causally. This limitation is necessary because there are cases in which both the equivalence and the adequacy theory lead to unfair results.

example

A motorist drives in a built -up area at extremely excessive speed. Then he drives on the country road at the prescribed speed. In the next town he also behaves in a traffic-friendly manner, but runs over a pedestrian suddenly stepping onto the road.

It is questionable whether the motorist can be punished with the equivalence theory for negligently causing the traffic accident by driving too fast far in front of the scene of the accident: Driving too fast in the first town was causal for the accident, as the driver was less Speed ​​at the time of the accident would not have been at the appropriate point. The adequacy theory also does not relieve the driver, since according to normal life experience it is not beyond every expectation that too high a speed can lead to an accident.

This is where the theory of the “protective purpose of the standard” comes into play: The purpose of speed limits is to counteract the typical dangers of higher speeds. But they are not supposed to prevent a driver from arriving faster in the next town. The result is that driving too fast was only a violation of the speed limit, but due to the lack of objective attribution of the result of death, there is no punishment for negligent homicide.

literature

  • Wilhelm Degener: The doctrine of the protective purpose of the norm and the criminal offenses under criminal law . Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden 2001, ISBN 978-3-7890-7041-9