The Concept Of Justifiable Defense In The Cultures Of The Right And Potestarian Types

This graduation paper is devoted to the analysis of justifiable (necessity) defence in different cultures from the perspective of libertarian philosophy and V. A. Chetvernin’s institutional theory. The goal of this work is to determine how justifiable defence is understood in different cultural contexts, and to analyse through legislation and case law how a functioning of this institution changes depending on the type of culture. To reach this goal, there have been the following tasks achieved: 1) a necessary terminology introduced; 2) definitions of potestarian and right-type cultures given; 3) justifiable defence in the two types of culture defined; 4) responsibility for justifiable defence in different cultures studied; 5) legislation, case law and opinions of scholars concerning the research question analysed; 6) final definition of justifiable defence developed. As a result of this research, we have made the below inferences: 1) the institution of justifiable defence appeared in Russia as a result of reception of legislation (term), for this reason it does not work in this county: for a right-type institute there should be a right-type culture; 2) the term ‘justifiable (necessity) defence’ cannot be applied to the right-type culture, as it does not illustrate the concept of this culture; it is more reasonable to use the term ‘private defence’, as it clearly demonstrates the main value of this culture — private property; 3) in the countries of a right-type culture the institution of private defence appeared due to development of society, which can be seen in case law and doctrine; 4) the role of private property is sometimes overestimated in the USA: it is often more important than a person’s life; 5) it is reasonable to distinguish between the self-ownership of a person (their mind, body, life) and self-ownership of property (objects) in the institutional theory; 6) we have defined justifiable (private) defence for the two types of culture.