Legal liability: some aspects of theoretical understanding in legal science

The article analyzes the causes of the increased during the second half of the twentieth century researchers interested in theoretical issues of legal liability. Research goal is to find the most grounded concept of legal liability and maintaining a critical appraisal from different scientific perspectives. Provides historical and legal analysis of the notion and essence of legal responsibility, justification of positive and retrospective responsibility, the ratio of legal responsibility and the rule of law. Assesses the theory of “two aspect legal responsibility”, according to which in addition to legal liability for the offense and in close connection with it there is a positive legal responsibility (consciousness of duty, the duty to take actions appropriate to the nature of the social system). Shows the contribution of Belarusian lawyers in the definition of the notion and essence of legal liability, in the study of its individual species. It is shown that in the beginning of XXI century the interest of the General theoretical problems of legal liability associated with the necessity of further democratization of modern political regimes of the post-Soviet States. Explains that the existing theoretical problems of understanding of the legal responsibility largely exacerbated by the absence to date of normative regulation of the General concept of responsibility, different approaches legislators CIS countries to determining its content, purposes and types, which makes it necessary to conduct comprehensive theoretical research in this field. It concludes that if in the past the understanding of many issues of legal responsibility in legal science was more applied nature, then at the present stage in the theory of law, it gained methodological, philosophical meaning.