Tiburtius Recognition Award for Florian Slogsnat
Honor from Berlin Universities
Legal scholar Florian Slogsnat was awarded a Tiburtius Recognition Prize from Berlin Universities for his doctoral thesis Justifying Necessity in Democratic States Governed by the Rule of Law – the Primacy of State Procedures in Cases of Section 34 of the German Criminal Code.
The prize is one of three awards and three recognition awards presented by the State Conference of Rectors and Presidents of Berlin Universities (LKRP) to doctoral students at Berlin universities for outstanding dissertations.
In his dissertation, Slogsnat examines the relationship between private and state powers in situations of danger and conflict. He asks: Which conflicts can private individuals resolve “on their own” and which are best left to the state? How are individual and community, citizen and state, civil courage (Zivilcourage) and bureaucracy related to one another?
These questions are particularly relevant in criminal law in connection with justifying necessity under Section 34 of the German Criminal Code (StGB). This provision means that an act is justified, and thus not unlawful, if it is necessary and constitutes an adequate means of averting danger and protecting an overriding interest. Because there are usually institutionalized mechanisms in place to avert danger and resolve conflicts of interest, it is often unclear who should take action in a given case — private citizens or public institutions?
Slogsnat’s dissertation addresses these questions, drawing on considerations of legal and political philosophy; theories of democracy, procedural, and fundamental rights; and principles of constitutional, administrative, and procedural law. From this framework, his work enables the resolution of concrete, individual cases in connection with justifying necessity.
Florian Slogsnat was a doctoral researcher in the Department of Criminal Law at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg, Germany from 2020 to 2023. His doctoral research was supervised by Tatjana Hörnle, director at the Institute and head of its Criminal Law Department. In the summer of this year, he received both the Otto Hahn Medal from the Max Planck Society and the Otto Hahn Award for his innovative approach to emergency powers and state procedures.
Having recently completed his German legal preparatory service (Rechtsreferendariat), Florian plans to return to the Max Planck Institute as a postdoctoral researcher next year.
The Tiburtius Prize is named after Joachim Tiburtius, former professor of economics at Freie Universität Berlin, who served as Berlin’s Senator for Public Education in the 1950s and 1960s.