Archive of Events

Archive of Events

Host: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law
Movie director Hans Erich-Viet will be presenting his 2018 documentary Der letzte Jolly Boy. [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]
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]
The ‘Big Data Revolution’ has allowed accumulating significant amounts of statistical data covering all areas of life. Such data can have high probative value in legal trials. Still, courts in and outside the UK have been ambivalent about the possibility of mak­­ing legal judgements based solely on statistics. The presen­­ta­­­tion will seek to uncover the root of this ambivalence, and to suggest that it highlights a fundamental connection between practical normativity and epistemic normativity. The argument will be that a Razian concept of respect for persons provides reasons against legal judgments of liability based solely on statistics. This is because statistics logically bar the elimination of the risk of error, and relatedly, they cannot justify belief in the availability of reasons to make a judgment of liability. The presentation will further seek to demonstrate that the argument carries over to non-legal spheres in which the Razian notion of respect plays a role. The UK’s attempt to determine A-level grades algorithmically during the Covid-19 pandemic provides an example. [more]
Legal hermeneutics could be deemed a broader notion than just legal interpretation. When legal practitioners cope with the law, they often do much more than merely interpret it. Arguably, they engage in legal construction, apply the law to a case at hand, and exercise discretion. In this spirit, the workshop aims to take this more comprehensive perspective of legal hermeneutics ­seriously by inviting its participants to address these various hermeneutic activities in legal adjudication. [more]

Just War and Self-Defence

Guest Lecture Series “Society: Status Quo and Normative Change”
Just war theorising has undergone a renaissance inspired by the ground-breaking work of Jeff McMahan. Central to the new orthodoxy is the claim that self-defence is a right that can justify a right to inflict harm on unlawful aggressors. Crucially, this is a right to inflict harm available to both the victim and others even if these others are not harmed or threatened. This talk explores how this view of just war as self-defence justifying a right to harm is based on a misunderstanding of how self-defence works in criminal law. This alternative view understands self-defence as a kind of defence, such as duress, which might provide an excuse for wrongs and not a justification to do wrong. The talk examines the consequences for just war theorising, such as whether understanding just war as excused sets a higher threshold for justification. [more]

Challenges of Rape Law Reform

Academic Workshop
We are pleased to announce the upcoming workshop on rape law, featuring distinguished legal scholar Stephen Schulhofer as our special guest. This workshop will bring together a panel of esteemed experts in the field to delve into the complexities and implications surrounding rape law within our legal system. [more]
American criminal laws and criminal justice systems are harsher, more punitive, more afflicted by racial disparities and injustices, more indifferent to suffering, and less respectful of human dignity than those of other Western countries. The explanations usually offered—rising crime rates in the 1970s and 1980s, public anger and anxiety, crime control politics, neoliberal economic and social policies—are fundamentally incomplete. The deeper explanations are four features of American history and culture that shaped values, attitudes, and beliefs and produced a political culture in which suffering is fatalistically accepted and policy makers are largely indifferent to individual injustices. The four elements are the history of American race relations, the evolution of Protestant fundamentalism, local election of judges and prosecutors, and the continuing influence of political and social values that emerged during three centuries of Western expansion. The last, encapsulated in Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier thesis,” is interwoven with the other three. Together, they explain long-term characteristics of American criminal justice and the extraordinary severity of penal policies and practices since the 1970. [more]

Conceptual Engineering and the Law

Workshop
Conceptual engineering aims to replace imprecise, misleading, or contradictory concepts with more accurate ones. Rather than asking how a concept is being used, it questions whether it is right to use it that way. It offers a new way of understanding many of our disagreements: even when we mean different things by the words we argue about, we don’t always talk past each other. Sometimes, we engage in a fundamental dispute about what these words ought to mean, and by extension, about the best way to describe reality. [more]

What Children reveal about the Origins of Human Cooperation

Guest Lecture Series “Society: Status Quo and Normative Change”
Humans are able to cooperate with others in sophisticated, flexible ways: assisting others who need help, working collaboratively in teams, and sharing resources according to what’s ‘fair’. How do humans accomplish these behaviors? In some views, we are initially driven by purely selfish motives and must be taught to be cooperative. Yet other views suggest we have a biological predisposition for cooperation that emerges early in childhood. I will discuss developmental studies with children and comparative studies with chimpanzees that provide insight into the origins of human evolution and development. [more]
Show more
Go to Editor View