The Criminal Symbolism and the No-Legitimization of Punitive Power in Risk Society: Consequences and Inaccuracies

• Main Authors: Kelvia de Oliveira Toledo, Claudio Abel Franco de Assis
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós-graduação em Direito (CONPEDI) 2015-12-01
• Series: Revista de Criminologias e Politicas Criminais
• Subjects: Direito penal simbólico, Sociedade de risco, Crise de legitimidade do poder punitivo, Estado democrático de direito, Política criminal, Sistema penal
• Online Access: http://www.indexlaw.org/index.php/revistacpc/article/view/42

This papers presents the discuss of the Symbolic Criminal Law, based on no-legitimization theory such as the marginal realism of Eugenio Raul Zaffaroni, with the theoretical support all the historicity of expansion of Criminal Law and its growing functionalization and legitimacy or no-legitimacy crisis that it has experienced. Therefore, we seek to understand the application of Criminal Justice in Democratic rule-of-law State and its possible paradoxes in contemporary society, like the increasing expansion of penal law, its symbolic use and the challenges of the Criminal Law modern, which should work as a instrument of the valuable principles fixed in the Constitution. Accordingly this, the article tries to develop these issues from theoretical discussions of Symbolic Criminal Law in the the modern times.