Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Milan Kuhli, Gideon Stiening Ernst Ferdinand Klein is one of the most prominent figures of the late German Enlightenment. A philosopher, scholar of criminal law, and reformer of the judiciary, he not only played an influential role in shaping academic discourse in these fields at the end of the 18th century. He also had a lasting impact on forming public opinion on the relevant socio-political issues in this context as a publicist.
Head of project: Benjamin Rusteberg This project deals with action-oriented measures of personal prevention in police law, which are linked to predictions that a particular person will behave unlawfully in the future. Such measures can be found in almost all areas of the special administrative law, ranging from reliability under commercial law, to the character fitness of a holder of a driving licence, to defence measures against terrorism.
Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Martin Brecher What is the relationship between law and morality? Does legal philosophy merely apply general moral principles to particular circumstances that give rise to the need for law and its institutions? Or does law have its own kind of normativity, which cannot be reduced to morality?
Head of project: Sophie-Marie Humbert Surrogacy is an internationally controversial method of medically-assisted reproduction. Legislation in Germany proscribes medical assistance in impregnating a surrogate and forbids acting as an agent between intended parents and surrogates.
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?
Head of project: Benjamin Vogel Globalization and digitalization have profoundly changed the relationship between nation states and the private sector in recent decades. Increasingly, private com-panies are creating and controlling the spaces in which economic and social interactions take place – for example, on the Internet or in financial markets.
Heads of project: Tatjana Hörnle, Carina Tetal The severity of criminal sanctions targeting the production, possession, and distribution of child pornography, that is, offenses involving child sexual exploitation material (CSEM), is often justified as necessary to prevent future child sexual abuse. This project examined the plausibility of this argument. In a first step, research-ers evaluated the current state of research in this area.
Head of project: Cristina Valega Chipoco During the past two decades, many transnational and domestic statutes that regulate the offence of rape have turned away from considering violence or threats as necessary modalities of the offence and have begun treating non-consent as its essential element. This transition can be seen in recent international human rights treaties and normative documents, judgments of international courts, and domestic legal reforms.
Head of project: Federico Lorenzo Ramaioli This comparative philosophy of law dissertation aims at formulating a new analytical approach to the Islamic legal tradition based on ‘juridical categories’, a concept that facilitates comprehension and understanding of juridical phenomena.
Head of project: Linus Ensel The focus of this research project lies on the potential advantages of a partial rationalization of the sentencing process. This kind of intervention in the existing system would lead to a reduction of judicial discretion and would raise the question of the role human decision-making should play in the sentencing process.
Head of project: Sofiya Kartalova As a result of mounting migratory, currency, and judicial reform tensions, the European Union (EU) is currently confronting a rule of law crisis. Rather than focus solely on issues of political legitimacy, recent scholarship proposes reframing this crisis as an absence of trust among EU Member States as well as between some of the EU Member States and EU institutions.