Project

Head of project: Suheib Qaderi
German criminal law provides a set of norms that (ostensibly) presuppose a moral judgment. For example, public prosecutors and courts have to judge questions of “reprehensibility,” “common decency,” and “base motives.” How are such assessments to be made in an ideologically neutral state? more

Heads of project: Ralf Poscher, Elisa Orrù
FreiburgRESIST is a federally-funded, collaborative research pro­ject involving the City of Freiburg authorities and the University of Freiburg’s transdisciplinary Cen­tre for Security and Society. It integrates the fields of information technology, ju­rid­ical, sociological, ethical, and political security research. more

Head of project: Valerij Zisman
Normative debates often rely on theories about what is right and wrong. In the case of punishment theory, for ex­am­ple, retributivists often rely on deontological theories, while proponents of deterrence theory draw from utilitari­an­ism. more

Heads of project: Valerij Zisman, Ivó Co­ca-Vi­la
What role does the relationship between the state and its citizens play for criminal law theory? A number of in­flu­en­tial scholars assume that criminal law must be founded on a bond of citizenship between the offender and the state that reinforces the legitimacy of criminal punishment. If this is the case, how does this assumption affect the state’s standing when it punishes non-citizens or “semi-citizens”? more

Head of project: Valerij Zisman
In the past, theorizing in criminal law was seen as a primarily philosophical and legal enterprise. Recently, scholars have begun trying to combine research from moral and social psychology, which investigate what drives people to impose punishment, with the normative literature on punishment theory. more