Archive of Events

Archive of Events

Movie director Hans Erich-Viet will be presenting his 2018 documentary Der letzte Jolly Boy. [more]
The European Court of Human Rights: an Insider’s View [more]
Struggles for recognition often concern not only the right to be heard but also to be believed. A recurrent criticism of criminal justice systems in Germany and elsewhere holds that the testimonies of some witness groups such as alleged victims of sexual offenses are not adequately believed. This criticism raises worries about the legitimacy of criminal procedures and should not be dismissed as mere empirical matters. One of the most influential theories in contemporary philosophy, Miranda Fricker's account of epistemic injustice, explores forms of injustice which persons may be exposed to in the production of knowledge and in giving testimony. The account provides a philosophical lens for analyzing German criminal procedural law. In particular, the talk examines the claim that epistemic justice may and should be considered an implicit principle of criminal procedural law, with implications for two case examples: the pre­sump­tion of falsity of witness statements, established in a landmark decision by the German Fed­eral Court of Justice over twenty years ago, as well as the way the justice system addresses specific group-based biases in judicial reasoning such as racial bias. Both suggest legal reforms. [more]

Theorizing Criminal Law

Conference

Criminal Law and Social Change

Symposium
A dominant theme in criminal law theory is that censure and punishment are appropriate only insofar as they are proportional responses to culpable actions. The problem is that much of existing criminal law does not fit this model. A number of responses to this mismatch have been proposed. Perhaps the criminal law should be reformed to match the theory; perhaps we can do more to understand how even violations of mala prohibita offenses are culpable; perhaps we need to take this connection as aspirational but not strictly binding; or perhaps we should recognize that the connection between punishment and culpable actions is just a misguided ideological fixation—in truth, we are better off using a utilitarian conception of the criminal law, according to which it is just a tool to be used to deter potential criminal action and incapacitate potential criminals in whatever way best serves society. I reject all of these options and defend a different account. I argue that the criminal justice system draws on two normative frameworks. Criminal law properly conceived calls for and licenses censure and punishment, but only insofar as they are proportional responses to culpable actions. Penal law operates as a complement to criminal law. It is not responsive (at least not in the same way) to the culpability of action, and it grounds no censure. But it allows for penalties that exceed those that would be proportional to the culpability of an action (and certainly than those that fit Ordnungswidrigkeiten). It is also responsive to, in ways the criminal law is not, the benefits of incapacitating the dangerous. It can do these things because it operates on a separate basis: not retributive response to culpable action but fair forfeiture of the right not to be penalized. These two foundations can be harmonized to provide a normative account of the criminal justice system that fits the law reasonably well but still has some revisionist force. [more]

Centering Victims in Criminal Justice: Philosophical and Legal Perspectives

Conference Panel
  • Date: Sep 15, 2023
  • Time: 04:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Tokyo UTC+09:00)
  • Panel organized by: Otto Hahn Research Group on Alternative and Informal Systems of Crime Control and Criminal Justice (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law)
  • Location: Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto/Japan
  • Host: AIDP Young Penalists Committee
– Within the framework of the 11th International Association of Penal Law (AIDP) Young Penalists Symposium on Victim-Centered Criminal Justice – [more]
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