Projects

The Concept of Non-Decisions

Head of project: S. Katharina Stein
Decisions are fundamental to law, whether in its creation, application, or disputation. Decision-making is so closely linked to law, that law is inconceivable without it. While previous research has focused on decisions and decision-making processes, autonomy, and options, this post-doctoral research project addresses a vital but previously neglected aspect of decision-making by examining the textual opposite of a decision—viz, the non-decision.

Rights in Criminal Law

Project

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Elias Moser
The aim of the project is to address the issue of rights in criminal law: Who holds and who should hold a right not to be wronged by others? And is it the violation of rights – rather than the causing of harm – that grounds a prima facie reason for criminalization?

Rethinking Digital Media Regulation

Department of Criminal Law Department of Public Law Project

Heads of project: J. Rinceanu, R. Stephenson, P. Granata, F. Zufall
The Internet and social media have triggered a radical shift in our digital media environment. Discourse production in society has moved onto a new medium and changed its structure and dynamic. The most fundamental features of this new environment have been, first, a shift from an offline “broadcasting” to an online “participatory” communication model and, second, the rise of dominant, privately owned digital intermediaries, the so-called “Big Five”.

Legal Hermeneutics and Metaethics

Department of Public Law Project

Head of project: Rafael Giorgio Dalla Barba
The interdisciplinary project in legal philosophy examines the relevance and impact of metaethics on the legal indeterminacy debate. The first chapter (A.) shows the widely accepted argument that, in the so-called hard cases in which the application of legal materials is even for experts highly controversial, the law is indeterminate.

Creating Law or Facts? AI Systems Disrupting Criminal Justice

Project

Head of project: Sabine Gless
Are programmers the new lawmakers, as Joseph Weizenbaum insinuated back in the last century? And will they remake the criminal justice universe? Certainly, AI systems will continue to replace human decision-making at various points within the criminal justice system. Today’s prominent examples of such replacements include risk profiling and assistance in sentencing.

Handbook of Constitutional Law

Department of Public Law Project

Heads of project: R. Poscher, M. Herdegen, J. Masing, K. F. Gärditz
The Handbook of Constitutional Law is co-authored by 24 German professors, and supported by 15 international academics from Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia. Edited by Professors Herdegen, Masing, Poscher, and Gärditz, the Handbook’s main purpose is to foster transnational constitutional dialogue.

Citizenship and Fragmentation in Criminal Law

Department of Criminal Law Project

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”?

After the Istanbul Convention: Measures against Domestic and Gender-Based Violence in a Comparative Legal Perspective

Department of Criminal Law Project

Head of project: Konstanze Jarvers
The phenomenon of domestic and gender-based violence against women is widespread and affects all social classes and all countries. In 2014, for example, 33% of women in the EU between the ages of 18 and 74 had been victims of physical or sexual assault at some point in their lives.

Germany’s ‘Separation Principle’: Police and Secret Service Reconnaissance Tasks in a Changing Security Landscape

Department of Public Law Project

Head of project: Jakob Mutter
This project addresses the growing convergence between modern police work and security intelligence directives. Besides softening the ‘iron limits’ of concrete danger and initial suspicion as vital law enforcement intervention thresholds, state responses to terrorism and international organised crime have expanded police powers and their technical surveillance capabilities to record and evaluate complex threat scenarios.

Reasonable Punishment? The Presence of German Idealism in the Theory of Punishment

Project

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Markus Abraham, Martin Brecher
The aim of this interdisciplinary research project is to evaluate from today’s perspective the dispute regarding whether punishment ought to be justified on retributive or on preventive grounds – a dispute that has been ongoing in Germany since the end of the eighteenth century and whose most influential protagonists were Kant, Fichte, and Hegel.

Doctrine of Fundamental Rights in a Transnational Perspective

Department of Public Law Project

Head of project: Ralf Poscher
The project aims at a continuous doctrinal development of fundamental rights—with particular focus on fundamental rights especially impacted by public security measures—in a transnational perspective. Fundamental rights are central for the legal evaluation of public security measures.

Constitutional Requirements for the Treatment of Civil Disobedience

Department of Public Law Project

Head of project: Max Poschmann
While civil disobedience has been widely discussed in political theory, it remains mostly neglected in German legal scholarship. Bridging this gap, this dissertation examines under what conditions, and in what ways, civil disobedience may be constitutionally protected under German law.

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