Consent to Injury as a Potential Circumstance That Excludes the Criminal Nature of the Act: On the Concept Content

The problem of consent to injury raises almost the largest number of discussions in the Russian criminal law theory. Although the social relations need the respective legal regulation, the criminal law has no provision to determine legality of causing an injury upon the victim’s consent. The concept of consent to injury is the critical aspect of the problem under consideration. In this article, the author analyzes classical and contemporary approaches to defining the named concept and the list of its attributes and concludes that the consent to injury as a circumstance that excludes the criminal nature of the act is a will of a person that is formed based on personal interest gives rise to permissive criminal relations and is aimed at performance of an act by another person leading to socially relevant changes in a specific criminal law protection object owned by the consent subject. The conclusions presented in the article can be used as a theoretical basis for studies of conditions of acknowledging an injury caused upon the victim’s consent as legal, and in law making activities at design of respective legal provisions on consent to injury as a circumstance that excludes the criminal nature of the act.