The Right to Self-Defence and Protection of the Home: Theory and Law Enforcement

Questions of the permissible limits to self-defence are raised periodically and are becoming quite acute and high-profile. The principle ‘My home is my castle’ is, in many countries, associated with constitutional guarantees giving the right to sanctity of the home. “To protect people who protect themselves and protect the life and health of others,” said President Putin on 9 December 2021 at a meeting of the Human Rights Council. The right to sanctity of the home is a crucial constitutional human right. On 31 May 2022, a Plenum of Russia’s Supreme Court amended its 2012 Resolution No. 19 ‘On application by courts of the legislation on reasonable defence and infliction of harm when restraining a crime perpetrator’. Today, when protecting themselves, Russian citizens must assess the nature of the danger of violence or threat, are restricted by the limits of reasonable force in self-defence, while the criminal is not restricted in any way. As practice has shown, there are cases when people who were protecting their own lives and those of their children find themselves in court as accused and receive actual custodial sentences. If, as a result of self-defence, the attacker dies, this almost always means a custodial sentence. Without the law being amended, will the latest clarification issued by the Supreme Court have any material effect on judicial practice in cases of exceeding reasonable force in self-defence? How should law enforcement practice be shaped to protect people’s own lives and health, and those of people close to them, as well as when they fulfil their civic duty to protect people under attack?