THE MAIN TYPES OF LEGALLY SIGNIFICANT ACTIONS AS AN OBJECT OF GENERAL THEORETICAL CLASSIFICATION

Abstract

Introduction. The article, after explaining that, according to its formally defined features, legal behaviour is always either an action performed (fully or partially) or an action not performed (signs of omission are usually signs of an action which the subject of law did not perform as defined by a rule of law), states that the methodological meaning of the concept of ‘action’ suggests that the generalised view of ‘types of legal behaviour’ is primarily reflected in the ‘general theoretical classification of the main types of legal actions’. The purpose of the article is to create (as a first approximation) a general theoretical classification of the main types of actions with legal significance based on their grouping ‘by legal qualification’, ‘by objective features of an action’, ‘by subjective features of an action’.

Summary of the main research results. According to the author, according to the legal qualification, an ‘action’ may be lawful (‘lawful’), unlawful (‘action-violation’, ‘objectively unlawful action’), an abuse of law, and a legal error. ‘Abuse of law’ and ‘legal error’ are dualistic phenomena (they can be both lawful and unlawful actions). Types of legal actions presented by the author according to their objective features (the list is not exhaustive): simple, complex; physical, linguistic; insignificant, significant (‘gestures’); with delayed, instant, close results; unfinished, finished; planned, ongoing, completed; short-term, long-term; preventive, provocative; open, hidden; individual, joint; contact, remote; in physical space (‘offline actions’), in virtual space (‘online actions’); permissible, real; relevant, irrelevant; actions-fabrications, actions-falsifications (improved due to computer technologies ‘deepfake’); non-automated, automated (partially, fully; in particular, ‘robotics with artificial intelligence’ is used, ‘lethal autonomous weapons’ are developed in the context of humanity's entry into the era of ‘algorithmic wars’). Types of legal actions by their subjective characteristics (the list is not exhaustive):

conscious, unconscious (unconscious by the subject of the action; unconscious by the subject who is the object of influence of a certain action); innocent, guilty (intentional, negligent); rational, intuitive; motivated, unmotivated; volitional, (‘consciously volitional’), involuntary (actions in a state of insanity, unconditionally reflexive actions); voluntary, involuntary; in a state of delusion as a result of error, in a state of delusion as a result of deception; with a planned, unplanned result; genetically determined, genetically unrelated (attention is drawn to the problem of a ‘genetically modified person’).

Conclusions. The formation of a general theoretical classification of types of legal actions may be based on various criteria (by branches of law, by subjects of law, etc.). However, such a classification will have the most applied and, at the same time, didactically oriented character when the philosophical concepts of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ are used as its system-forming criterion, reflected in the concepts of ‘composition of lawful conduct’ and ‘composition of an offence’, which, in turn, are inseparable from the concept of ‘legal qualification’ in its connection with the concept of ‘legal liability’.