Murder as the most serious offence in comparative legislation

Despite its specific definitions across countries, murder has got a universal character. Human life is of primary importance and a universal value in every society, so legal measures in different legislation are also universal. If human life is regarded as the object of protection in criminal legislation, it could be noticed that modern criminal legislation has developed a penalty system in order to protect human beings in practice, and that the system, regardless of the differences among criminal legislations of different countries, in almost all those countries has the same basic characteristics. This paper provides an overview of murder as a most serious offence, in which penalties for this criminal offence, as incrimination against human life, are compared between the Anglo-Saxon and European Continental legal systems. By analyzing criminal legislations in Great Britain, the United States of America, Australia and Canada we presented the key principles of common and statute law related to murder as a most serious offence. Within the European Continental legal system, we have analyzed criminal legislations in the following countries: France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. For murder a severe penalty is imposed. In some states of the USA and Russia capital punishment is imposed; where capital punishment is abolished, it is replaced with the maximum duration sentence - life imprisonment. In our criminal legislation, sentence of thirty to forty years' imprisonment may be imposed for murder, as this is the most severe sentence in our criminal law.