ИСТОРИЈСКО-ДОГМАТСКИ РАЗВОЈ УЧЕЊА О БИЋУ КРИВИЧНОГ ДЕЛА
HISTORICAL-DOGMATIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNDERSTANDING OF ACTUS REUS OF THE CRIMINAL OFFENCE

Summary/Abstract: In the paper, the author discusses the historical-dogmatic development of the concept of the actus reus of a criminal offence. While this notion was initially understood only in the sense of the traces and objects of the committed criminal offence, at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries ,the term “actus reus” began to denote the totality of features that make up the concept of a criminal offence. This term acquired an independent role in the criminal offence system at the beginning of the20th century, when the German theoretician Beling defined it as an element in the general concept of a criminal offence. The concept of actus reus of a criminal offence in that period, in the spirit of the classic approach to the criminal offence system, is understood exclusively as an objective category, devoid of subjective admixtures (which belong to guilt), with elements of a descriptive character. Itis only later that subjective elements are noticed within the framework of unlawfulness, and even of actus reus itself, as well as certain characteristics that cannot be known by sensory perception, but must be evaluated and whose meaning depends on the appropriate legal, social, or moral norm. Despite the fact that in the modern science of criminal law, a different view of the essence of an actus reus dominates, there are still certain disagreements regarding its content, which essentially depends on the basic features and traditions of a certain criminal justice system.

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