Les listes d'infractions

The thesis analyses the utilization of enumeration through the "listing of crimes" as a legislative technique in criminal law. Such a method of legislative drafting was used historically in bilateral conventions, specifically in the area of extradition, but nowadays it is heavily employed in criminal law to delimit the scope of application of exceptional rules. Aiming at providing a rich and solid base of knowledge in a domain that is rarely studied, this work reviews various systems and legal orders. As such, the resort to "listing of crimes" will be examined in international criminal law as well as in French and Italian criminal law. Being a tool to select a group of crimes in order to treat them differently than the common crimes, the listing technique serves the needs of aggravated or innovative repression. In that regard, the "listing" technique is not only considered as a means of legislative drafting, but its political function is also analyzed. The utilization of this technique is assessed in the light of the expected as well as the verified results. The extension of an existing "list of crimes", a normal consequence of resorting to enumeration, is found to be positive in some cases but more or less criticized in other cases where legislatures deviate from the original reason for which this drafting technique has been elaborated. Examined from the perspective of the fundamental principles of criminal law, namely the principle of legality and the principle of proportionality, the usage of this technique is appraised. The espect of these two primordial principles constitutes the ultimate solution proposed for any deviated resort to "listing of crimes" as a legislative tool.