Sentencing Thresholds in German Criminal Law and Practice: Legal and Empirical Aspects

The position of the custody threshold and the proportion of cases passing it are crucial for any attempt to reduce imprisonment. The article focuses on the sentencing threshold(s) in Germany, a country that shows relatively low incarceration rates in international comparison. This is in part due to legislation that aims to replace short prison sentences, especially those below six months, by fines, and unsuspended prison sentences up to two years by suspended ones. These provisions are widely applied in practice, yet not always in accordance with the letter of the law. The article will give an overview of the legal and practical aspects of decision-making between fines and prison sentences and between suspended and unsuspended sentences in Germany. It will show that there is not only one sentencing threshold identifiable in practice, but two different ones: firstly, between fines and suspended sentences, and secondly, between suspended and unsuspended sentences. Problems of the German system are identified, among which are the convertability of day fines into suspended and unsuspended prison terms and the treatment of persistent recidivists. Finally, possible solutions are proposed.     

The business case for sustainability in retrospect: A Scandinavian institutionalism perspective on the role of expert conferences in shaping the emerging “CSR and corporate sustainability space”

This paper is concerned with the rise and, in retrospect, successful “positioning” of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability as a management idea. It answers to calls that more research is required into the “business case for sustainability,” especially the link between rhetoric and reality. We allow for a narrative-driven and dynamic perspective to frame the analysis of the discourse, rhetoric, and arguments in use during the emergence of “modern CSR” in Europe in the early 2000s. On the one hand, it shows that the European Union/Commission acted as an “enabler” of business case rhetoric. On the other hand, empirical evidence from two expert conferences series in Germany 2004–2008 leads to the conclusion that a wide coalition of interested parties continuously and progressively filled, shaped, and energized the early “CSR and corporate sustainability space” with presenting CSR as a rationale and progressive (management) idea.     

Die Fischereigenossenschaft nach dem LFischG NRW: Was ist das?

Natur und Recht - Vor 50 Jahren – im Jahr 1972 – wurde in Nordrhein-Westfalen das Preußische Fischereigesetz von 1916 durch das Landesfischereigesetz NRW a.F. abgelöst. Dieses...     

Does a Reorganization Law Improve the Efficiency of the Insolvency Law? The Finnish Experience

This paper provides empirical evidence on issues related to the role of reorganizations. The results show that creditors receive a better payoff in a reorganization than in a going concern sale in liquidation bankruptcy. The study finds support for one explanation, namely that the direct costs of a reorganization are lower than the costs of liquidation bankruptcy. However, direct costs can explain only a part of the reorganization surplus, since the reorganization surplus is much higher than the difference in direct costs.     

Think Tanks in Iceland

This article maps the landscape of think tanks in Iceland. It shows that think tanks are very few and insignificant in Icelandic policymaking. In the literature, the growth of think tanks in European countries with corporatist pasts has been linked to a change to a more pluralist system of interest representation. The case of Iceland lends support to this claim. In contrast to Scandinavia, corporatism remains entrenched in Iceland. But although there is a very limited market for local think tanks in Iceland, it is nevertheless recognized by political actors that touting policy advice offered by prestigious (international) think tanks can bring political benefits. This is also demonstrated in the article, showing that the influence of think tanks transcends at times national borders.     

The Autopoiesis of Administrative Systems: Niklas Luhmann on Public Administration and Public Policy

This article offers an introduction to Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems as it pertains to public administration and policy, as a first step towards both a critique and its empirical application to empirical reality. It reconstructs Luhmann's early writings on bureaucracy and policy-making and shows how this early, more empirical work grounded his abstract theory of social systems in general and the political system in particular. The article also introduces some central concepts of Luhmann's more recent work on the autopoietic nature of social systems and considers the latter's consequences for bureaucratic adaptiveness and governmental steering in the welfare state. One of the main benefits of applying Luhmann's theory to public administration, the article concludes, is that it conceptualizes the central concerns of public administration within a complex picture of society as a whole, in which both the agency that issues decisions and the realm affected by these decisions are included.     

Collecting on Moral Debts: Reparations for the Holocaust and Pořajmos

In the early 1980s, Sebba (1980) explored the victimological and criminological dimensions of German Holocaust reparations, utilizing a broad definition of victimization similar to Mendelsohn's (1976) earlier framing of this notion, which included victims of genocide and mass violence. Since this time, scant attention has been paid to the victimology of state crime, and even less to the victimological implications of genocide and mass violence. This is unfortunate since critical victimological lessons can be drawn from the study of the victims of genocide and mass violence. In this article, we focus on the post–World War II monetary reparations, or "compensation," demands made against the West German state by Jewish and "Gypsy" survivors of Nazi state-sponsored violence. Through a comparative analysis of these two cases, we seek to illustrate the organizational, social, and discursive conditions that either enabled or obstructed victim mobilization and, in so doing, to develop critical tools for better understanding "victim movements" and the trauma narratives they construct.     

Fairness, Justice, and Legitimacy: Experiences of People's Judges in South Russia

Which criteria do Russians use to evaluate the fairness of their judges, and how does perceived fairness of actual trials influence general beliefs about Russian courts? Lay assessors at courts in South Russia were asked about their experience serving on mixed courts. The justice of the verdicts rendered and the fairness of judges partly explain the respondents’ view of national courts. According to the results, the respondents are also using similar criteria for fairness as Americans or Germans. The social and psychological group effects in a Russian court of lay assessors exhibit a striking similarity to other Western tribunals.