The legislation of crimes against sexual integrity was initially aimed at safeguarding specific interests such as the honour of the father, the family, virginity, and the social security of women. Accordingly, the extent of rape victims was for a long time limited only to women (e.g. under Article 100 of the Criminal Code of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia from 1977, the execution of rape was only possible as immission penis in vaginam). In modern society, legislators seek to protect the self-determination of the individual, sexual and physical integrity, and sexual autonomy. This reversal demonstrates that modern criminal law revolves around the essential question of whether sexual intercourse is engaged in through free choice, that is, autonomously. Domestic legislators have been put under the pressure of media campaigns and controversial case law to modernise criminal law accordingly. In the spirit of the reforms, the Republic of Slovenia in 2021 adopted the amendments of Rape and Sexual Assault in the Criminal Code (KZ-1H) consistent with the affirmative consent model (“yes means yes”).

The article refers to the problem of sexual crimes of Roman Catholic priests. It includes an attempt of estimation of the range of the problem, based on available statistics and literature, as well as examples of reaction to the problem from the Church itself and from the state. The author analyzes potential criminogenic factors of sexual crimes in the Church, such as: the co-called “clerical culture”, the priesthood itself as a risk factor, celibacy of the clergy and homosexual orientation of the perpetrators. The article also describes the criminal law aspects of the problem, especially the punishable omission of denunciation, which is particularly important in the light of accusations of “covering up” sexual crimes by the Church or helping the perpetrators to avoid responsibility.

The subject of the study is a critical analysis of the preventive measure introduced to the Code of Criminal Procedure under Art. 276a of the Code of Criminal Procedure The article is a contribution to the discussion on the need for the functioning of this institution in its present shape. The author focuses on the manner of proceeding with the amendment and the need to adopt it in the wording adopted by the legislator. At the same time, he notices a number of inconsistencies in this regulation in the context of the current system of preventive measures, and calls for its revision.

Article 37a of Penal Code was s ignificant changed due to the amendment of 19 June 2020. This provision was introduced into the Penal Code in 2015 and was aimed at limiting the use of imprisonment in relation to minor offenses, but only punishable by imprisonment. In 2020, this direction of changes was partially reversed by increasing the requirements for the application of Art. 37a of the Penal Code, which was met with numerous doubts.

In many of criminal courts statements of reason there is information about accepting piece of evidence as a basis for findings only due to the fact that the piece in question does not raise any doubts, that there are no grounds for questioning its credibility, that it is consistent with other evidence or that none of the parties questioned its credibility. The aim of this work is to highlight the flawed way in which criminal courts approach their duty to assess evidence. Particular sections of the text discuss the reasons encountered in practice for finding evidence credible, explaining why the use of such circumstances should be considered a violation of the principle of free appraisal of evidence.

The specific legal benefit of the respective provisions of the Penal Code indicated in the title of the special chapter of the Code implies the type of legal benefits contained therein. Since May 25, 2019, the legislator, by amending the title of Chapter XXXVI of this Code as following: ‘Crimes against economic turnover and property interests in civil law transactions’ has extended the generic object of protection, as a result of which it is no longer relevant whether the respective conduct takes place in economic turnover (as previously) or in civil law turnover, in which non-professionals will appear on both sides. The Supreme Court noted that this would cause an inevitable revolution in the interpretation of the provisions of this chapter. Among other things, this applies to the crimes specified in Art. 301 of the Penal Code, sanctioning the debtor’s bankruptcy or insolvency, therefore penalisation, as a subject of a crime, will also apply to the “consumer”. At the same time, the legislator in the insolvency law, and more specifically in the Bankruptcy Law, opened access to debt relief also to those debtors “consumers” who led to their insolvency or significantly increased its degree intentionally or through gross negligence. There is a possibility of reduction of liabilities even if such a debtor acted deliberately. The author showed that this resulted in a discrepancy between criminal law and bankruptcy law, as well as an axiological collision in the legal system, which occurs when the legislator values a given value higher in one norm than in another, and in the other one does the opposite. In the author’s opinion, some norms will not be derogated by the legislator, and the conflict of laws rules will not apply in this case. It will be necessary to interpret penal provisions based on the paradigm of the presumption of the rationality of the legislator and the subsidiarity of criminal law.