The theory of duty offences and principle of legality

The theory of offences of duty is proposed as a solution to delimitate the perpetration and participation in crimes whose typical structure presupposes a special duty for the agent. In these crimes, the control over the act don’t provide a clear and coherent solution, for that reason it’s necessary to use a new idea such as breach of duty to determinate the perpetration. This new approach has been accepted by an important sector of international doctrine and jurisprudence; however, there are important criticisms, so it’s necessary to clarify some aspects of theory. Among these criticisms, those linked to the principle of legality stand out, due to the legitimizing nature of this principle. In this paper, these criticisms are analyzed, and it is shown that they can’t support convincingly an incompatibility of the theory of duty crimes' postulates with the principle of legality.