Nationalist Socialist Criminal Law

Kai Ambos is Full Professor at the University of Göttingen, Judge of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, The Hague, and Advisor (amicus curiae) to the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace.

• Chapter I. Preliminary Remarks 1. Zaffaroni’s “Doctrina Penal Nazi” 2. My approach Chapter II. The Foundations of National Socialist Criminal Law 1. Racism, Volksgemeinschaft, Führer state, Führer principle and exclusion2. The material concept of justice and wrongdoing, ethicisation, “total” criminal law and deformalisation3. General preventive and atonement-focused Willensstrafrecht (criminal law of the will)Chapter III. Continuity and the “Schulenstreit” (“Dispute between the Schools”) (?)Chapter IV. National Socialist Criminal Law and Neo-Kantianism 1. The (alleged) influence of Neo-Kantianism 2. The “Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism” 3. Neo-Kantianism—a forerunner of National Socialist criminal law? 4. Collectivism and material theories of value—forerunners of National Socialist criminal law?Chapter V. The Independent National Socialist Criminal Law of the Kiel School1. Basic orientation and main representatives 2. Criminal policy: an authoritarian NS criminal law 3. The role of the judge in the NS Führer state 4. Loyalty, breaches of duty, honour punishments5. Concrete Wesensschau (focus on the substance of the offence), Täterstrafrecht (agent-focused criminal law) and Willensstrafrecht (criminal law of the will)6. A comprehensive actus reus defined by overall disvalue (“offence type”) instead of a structured theory of crimeChapter VI. Erik Wolf: From Perpetrator Types to an Attitudinal Theory of Agency1. Authoritarian-social criminal law and theory of agency 2. Wolf’s turn towards and away from National Socialism Chapter VII. Some (preliminary) conclusions 1. Selective reception of German (NS-inspired) criminal law in Latin America 2. Did Hans Welzel truly overcome (Neo-Kantian) NS criminal law? 3. A continuity of National Socialist criminal law thought in Latin America?

A worthwhile read for any American criminal theorist – it jolts us out of our familiar discussion paradigms and reminds us of how criminal law theory was complicit in one of the darkest chapters in human history.