The Concept of Biopolitics: History, Modernity, Significance for Criminal Law Research

the article is devoted to the legal aspects of the philosophical concept of biopolitics. The relevance of this topic is conditioned by the fact that states, trying to solve their tasks, using, among other things, legal means, regulate the most “personal” spheres of human life, limiting the rights and freedoms of man and citizen guaranteed by constitutions. This strategy, now called “biopolitics”, can lead to a violation of the principles of reasonableness and proportionality when intervening in private affairs. The author seeks to form a scientific understanding of biopolitics, in particular, the history of the formation of this doctrine, its main provisions, as well as the possibilities of applying the biopolitical approach in analyzing criminal legal phenomena. Summarizing the results of the study, the author concludes that the philosophical concept of biopolitics, being a universal practice of population management applied by modern states, is of crucial importance in criminal legal research, as it allows to explain the motives of the state that chooses one or another way of regulating criminal legal relations and to assess the validity of the adoption of relevant legal norms in the prism of the balance of private and public interests.