Projects

Examining Prospective Jurors

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.

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 Deprivation of Nationality in the Fight Against Terrorism

Department of Public Law Project

Head of project: Samuel Hartwig
The last few years have seen a disquieting new trend emerge in global Islamist terrorism. The primary threat to Western societies used to be posed by terrorists entering Western countries from abroad. But nowadays citizens of Western countries also travel in the opposite direction to participate in terrorist campaigns in foreign countries.

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

Project

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.

NetzDG and Human Rights

Department of Criminal Law Project

Head of project: Johanna Rinceanu
The past five years have posed new challenges for Europe and the entire world: A rapid spread of digital violence and online “hate speech”, including image-based harassment, fake news, disinformation, propaganda, racism and xenophobia have become a steadily growing social problem fueled by migration crises, political upheavals, a fast rise of populism, the Corona pandemic, and the war in Ukraine.

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.

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.

State Secrets in Court Proceedings: A Comparison of German and US Law

Department of Public Law Project

Head of project: Maria Stemmler
Serious difficulties arise whenever state secrets are involved in judicial proceedings. Even in ideal circumstances where secrecy protects legitimate interests, the administration of justice may be obstructed. If the pertinent information is excluded, the rule of law might be endangered and important evidence omitted, to the disadvantage of one or more parties.

Doing Jury Work

Department of Criminal Law Project

Heads of project: Matthew Fox, David R. Gibson
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees criminal defendants the right to have their guilt decided by an impartial jury. Yet, trials do not occur in a vacuum and prospective jurors bring with them to court various biases that cause them to be partial.

The Criminal Liability of Inadvertent Negligence from a German and Anglo-American Perspective

The Criminalization of Inadvertent Negligence from a German and an Anglo-American Perspective

Project

Head of project: Johannes Weigel
The criminalization of inadvertent negligence has long been deliberated in German criminal law scholarship, although the debate seems largely to have come to a standstill in recent decades. Today, most scholars defend the existing criminalization by means of a (purely) norm-based allocation of blame.

Shifts in Interests in European Extradition Law

Department of Public Law Project

Head of project: Thomas Wahl
The surrender of criminal suspects who flee to foreign countries has sparked controversy for centuries. Relevant extradition law shows not only criminal law’s territorial limits, but the dissolution of tension between security through effective cross-border enforcement and protecting individual rights.

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.

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