Gastvortrag: 09.11.2026, Arlie Loughnan | Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung von Kriminalität, Sicherheit und Recht
In the current era, criminal law is facing profound challenges due to social, cultural, and epistemic transformation. These challenges include public expectations that criminal law address “wicked problems” like sexual and interpersonal violence at the same time as there is growing awareness of its inefficacy in this and other areas. There is also concern about the coherence of criminal responsibility, with, for example, both support and opposition to consideration of prior victimization in adjudicating and sentencing offenders. Overlaid on these challenges are those related to criminal justice processes, in which the role and integrity of individuals and institutions have come under attack. These challenges are so significant that they raise questions about the nature and scope of the criminal law of the future and provide reasons to believe it might be radically different from the present. In this lecture, Arlie Loughnan explores these issues and presents the aspects of contemporary criminal law that she has been analyzing as responses – including initiatives in transformative criminalization, the development of hybrid offenses/defenses in criminal legislation, and the personalization of aspects of criminal responsibility. In this discussion, she begins to sketch out a vision for future criminal law.