Abstract: The article considers the peculiarities of criminal responsibility in the environmental sphere and criminal responsibility for the violation of environmental law. It contains the authors’ proposals about the improvement of environmental and criminal legislation. At present, the issues of responsibility in the environmental sphere are one of the strategic directions of activities aimed at the protection from environmental degradation, depletion of natural resources, at citizens’ health protection and ecological safety of the state. Environmental responsibility has formed as an independent institution within the legal aspect of ecology, but for its appropriate functioning it is necessary to achieve the effective correlation of methods of impact and measures of environmentally friendly behavior of citizens. The research methodology is based on dialectics, abstraction, analysis, synthesis, deduction, the formal-legal, comparative-legal and statistical methods and the method of intersectoral legal studies. The development, propaganda and practical application of agreements in the sphere of environmental problems and environmental protection is our duty, which should be based on integration. The efforts of different specialists of Central Asian states should be united. It is very important to integrate scientific cooperation and extend the educational space, enhance the cooperation between law enforcement agencies and customs, tax and other ministries and institutions in the sphere of environment. 

Keywords: environmental attorney, illegal logging, criminal responsibility, environmental offence, ecological responsibility, environmental responsibility, environmental safety, responsibility, legislation, International Environmental Court

Abstract: The research subject includes the legal aspects of the Furman v. Georgia, the Gregg v. Georgia and other significant cases which had influenced the development of the institution of capital punishment in the USA in the late 20th century. The author considers the Furman v. Georgia case’s plot, pays attention to the social and legal prerequisites of the 1972 moratorium on the death penalty and its abolition in 1976. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the positions of the judges of the US Supreme Court and the post-Furman tendencies. The main research methods are the technical and the comparative-legal methods. The study is based on the analysis of the key cases of the US Supreme Court. Significant attention is paid to the evolution of the issue by means of the historical method. The author comes to the following conclusions: 1) the temporary moratorium on the death penalty in the US was a necessary stage of legal evolution; 2) the pause was needed for the reformation of criminal procedural legislation, the solution of the burning social and legal problems related to the death penalty. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the problem of imposition and further abolition of the moratorium on the death penalty in the USA hasn’t been studied in the Russian literature yet. The author concludes that the issue of the constitutional character of the death penalty in the USA is unlikely to be raised in the future, since in the late 20th century the legal procedure improvement tendency had formed. The author applies general philosophical methods including dialectics, the system method, analysis, synthesis, analogy, deduction, observation, modeling), legal methods (formal-logical), and the methods of specific sociological studies (statistical, expert assessments, etc.). The Gregg v. Georgia case has become the logic continuation of the Furman’s case. The death penalty is developing independently from the wills and the aspirations of the US Supreme Court being a significant socio-political phenomenon and a certain pattern of the American society’s conscience. The judges of the Supreme Court along with the citizens are the participants of the same historical process. The considered post-Furman tendencies equate and correct the application of a “cruel and unusual punishment”. We suppose that the issue of humanization and improvement of the procedure will be topical during a long period of time. 

Keywords: death penalty, democracy, rights, freedom, moratorium, violation, sanction, court, protection, case