Our Comparative Criminal Law Conversations project seeks to bridge the gap between common and civil law approaches to criminal law.
The first of many comparative criminal law conversations organized by the BCLC will feature English translations of some of the most influential criminal law articles published in civil law countries. The translated articles will be followed by short replies penned by some of Anglo-America’s leading criminal theorists. The authors of the original pieces will then write brief responses to the replies.
The first Comparative Criminal Law Conversation should be completed in late 2014 and published in early 2015.
The following civil law scholars have contributed to the first series of conversations:
- Diego-Manuel Luzón Peña - One of Europe’s most accomplished criminal law theorists, Luzón Peña is Professor of Criminal Law at the Universidad de Alcalá in Madrid, Spain. Peña’s writings on self-defense and passive necessity have heavily influenced the way in which civil law courts and scholars approach these doctrines. His textbook on the general part of the criminal law – now in its second edition – has helped shape modern Spanish and Latin American criminal law theory.
- Francisco Muñoz Conde - Conde is Professor of Criminal Law at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville, Spain. In 1999, he was awarded the prestigious Wissenschaftspreis (Prize for Scholarship) from the German Humboldt Foundation, becoming the second foreign scholar to receive the award and the only Spanish academic to do so. His treatise on the special part of the criminal law is the most widely cited work of its kind in Spain and Latin America.
- Jesús María Silva Sánchez - Sánchez is Professor of Criminal Law at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. His work on the “expansion of the criminal law” is required reading in law schools throughout Spain and Latin America, while his book on omissions is arguably the most important theoretical analysis of criminal liability for failures to act published in the Spanish language.