Abstract:
The article reviews problematic aspects of understanding legal responsibility within current theoretical concepts
in theory of law. Authors investigate the contents of such term as «legal responsibility» from perspectives
of negative and positive approaches to defining this legal category. Representation of legal responsibility
is considered in a form of a complex phenomenon, including two forms of realization: voluntary (positive)
and state-forced (negative), from perspective implying unity of positive and negative aspects. Special attention
is given to the study of native scientific literature, describing the viewpoints of Kazakh scientists in matters
of understanding legal responsibility. It is concluded that the absence of agreement of opinion does not
allow to formulate the definition containing all the characteristics of the studied phenomenon. However, the
authors make an attempt to build up such a definition.
