Component Elements of a Crime as an Ontological Reality of Unknown Existence

The paper deals with methodological problems of understanding the component elements of a crime in the doctrine and modern science of criminal law. The author analyzes the philosophical approaches to determining the essence of this phenomenon, the influence of the classical school of criminal law on the formation of such concepts as "crime" and "component elements of a crime", reveals the prerequisites and reasons for the multilevel understanding of the component elements of a crime in pre-revolutionary and Soviet criminal law. The ratio between the crime and the component elements of a crime is revealed (based on the features of these legal concepts) and questions are raised about the non-identical understanding of the same phenomena in criminal law. The author states that the component elements of a crime cannot be identified with the concept of "crime" and is the basis for criminal liability. The component elements are always a legislative (regulatory) model, not a reality. The reality is only a committed crime, which entails the emergence of the relevant legal relations. In conflict social relations characterized by the commission of an illegal criminal act, the crime itself exists, but not the component elements of this crime. The author suggests that the component elements should be distinguished within the scope of the crime’s illegality, rather than the crime as a whole. From this point of view, it is proved that the disposition of the criminal law norm determines the model of a specific illegal act and its features (objective and subjective), since in real life the composition is associated with those features that are described in the disposition of the legal norm. The disposition does not replace the component elements, on the contrary, the component elements of illegality are revealed in the disposition of the criminal law norm. Research methods used in the course of the study are as follows: formal dogmatic, historical legal, comparative legal.