Practice question · True or false
The prohibition of analogy in criminal law bars any analogical reasoning whatever, including reasoning that favours the accused.
Hints
- Ask whether the Code itself contains an analogical provision.
- There is an expressly analogical mitigating circumstance.
Show the answer
False
Why
False. The target of the prohibition is extension against the accused: punishing conduct the statute never described. The Code itself provides an expressly analogical mitigating circumstance, which shows that analogical reasoning as such is not banned. How far analogy in the accused's favour extends beyond such express provisions is genuinely disputed among Spanish writers.
Practise The Principle of Legality
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Law I is free to start.
More questions on The Principle of Legality
- Arrange these statements of the principle of legality in chronological order.
- Why is it consistent to forbid retroactive criminal law and at the same time apply a later, milder law to…
- The requirement of lex certa binds the legislator rather than the trial judge. Why does this distinction…
- In Spain a custom cannot create a criminal offence.
- Complete the requirements of the criminal statute.
- How many identities must coincide before the principle of non bis in idem prevents a second sanction?
- Arrange the checks a court makes under the principle of legality, in the order they arise.
- Sort each defect by the requirement of the criminal statute that it violates.
- Which are true of the requirement of lex certa?