Projects

Blame for Ignorance? Perspectives on Willful Blindness and Mistakes of Fact

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Svenja Schwartz, Alexander Heinze
Can a person be blamed for turning a blind eye to the circumstances of his or her conduct? From a criminal law perspective, the concept of “willful ignorance” (“willful blindness” or “conscious avoidance”) exists – in varying forms and terms – in different jurisdictions.

Taking Monetary Punishments Seriously

Department of Criminal Law Project

Head of project: Ivó Coca-Vila
Although theoretical work on the concept of punishment still focuses almost exclusively on custodial sentences (i.e., imprisonment), statistics show that the principal penalty employed by European criminal justice systems – at least in quantitative terms – is the fine. In Germany, for example, approximately 80% of criminal penalties imposed on individuals are fines.

Adjudication contra legem

Department of Public Law Project

Head of project: Eduardo Vandré Oliveira Lema Garcia
The project aims to justify adjudication contra legem. It demonstrates the lack of congruence between common sense about how judges decide and the actual practice that there are decisions that deviate from the traditional or consensual conception about the way the norm should be understood when constrained by semantics. Decisions contra legem, therefore, if not inevitable, are a reality in all judicial systems.

Secret Evidence in Criminal Proceedings

Department of Criminal Law Project

Head of project: Benjamin Vogel
In addition to politically motivated violence and hostile states, legal orders in Europe today are increasingly confronted with profit-driven organised crime that is integrated into globally-operating criminal networks and at the same time entrenched in European societies.

Examining Prospective Jurors

Department of Criminal Law Project

Heads of project: Matthew Fox, Steven E. Clayman
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees criminal defendants the right to have their guilt decided by an impartial jury. The complication to this right is that the information used to assess impartiality must be requested from prospective jurors themselves during voir dire.

Virtual Burglary Project

Department of Criminology MAXLab Project

Head of project: Jean-Louis van Gelder
The Virtual Burglary Project is a research program co-headed by Prof. Claire Nee (University of Portsmouth) and involves a collaboration with researchers from Leiden University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The Virtual Burglary Project uses a VR approach to better understand the behavior of residential burglars and to contribute to crime prevention. Data collections occur in Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Derogation Powers and Continuing States of Emergency under the ECHR

Department of Public Law Project

Head of project: Johanna Bücker
Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) authorizes Member States to suspend human rights in time of war or other public emergencies. This derogation provision has been used several times, its invocation and use differing widely over time. Since 2015, for example, derogations have been invoked in response to terrorism, military aggression, an attempted coup d’état, a global pandemic, an energy shortage, and a natural disaster.

The Legal Assessment of Cyber Attacks – Hack-Back as a Defence Measure

Department of Public Law Project

Head of project: Philipp Johner
Cyber attacks on government institutions and information technology systems occur regularly, representing a substantial security threat to Germany and its economic and political interests. Besides passive defence measures, the so-called ‘hack back’ can be considered an active defence measure. Here, the attacked party launches a cyber counter-attack to dissuade the attacker from their original aim.

Anti-Impunity: Do Human Rights Give the Victim a Right to Punishment?

Project

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Patrick Joseph Siegle
The project examines the human rights guarantees of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, and the fundamental rights of the German Grundgesetz as shaped by the respective case law to determine the extent to which they grant victims of crime subjective rights to punishment of the offender.

Mitigation for Failed Attempts

Department of Criminal Law Project

Head of project: Julia O’Rourke
Joel Feinberg once noted, “Every bona fide philosopher of law tries his hand at least once at the ancient problem of punishing failed attempts“ (37 Arizona Law Review 117 [1995]). While this is certainly true of Anglo-Americans, contemporary German jurists have remained surprisingly silent on the subject. In particular, the effects of failure on sentencing decisions have received little to no attention from a normative perspective.

Legal Safeguards of Truth

Department of Public Law Project

Head of project: Johannes Buchheim
This project seeks to analyze and assess the constitutional and practical possibilities and limits of legal instruments countering the spreading of “fake news,” especially in the digital realm. In the past decade, the phenomenon of “fake news”— severely exacerbated by the digital media revolution—has raised persistent and heightened concerns throughout liberal democracies.

Public-Private Partnerships in the Fight against the Financing of Terrorism

Department of Criminal Law Project

Head of project: Benjamin Vogel
Confronted with transnational terrorism and other forms of organised crime that elude the territorial borders of nation states, law enforcement authorities in many countries are increasingly turning to the private sector to tackle illicit financial flows. While banks and other financial institutions have been tasked for some decades with extensive preventive duties as well as obligations to report suspicious transactions to the authorities, doubts persist as to whether these efforts are successful or whether they are even worth the effort.

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