Christoph Luther Wins Prize of the 41st German Legal History Conference

The volume Enlightened Punishment: Human Rights in the 18th Century (Aufgeklärt strafen. Menschengerechtigkeit im 18. Jahrhundert) was awarded

October 14, 2016

Christoph Luther’s monograph, which appeared as volume 294 in the MPI series Studies in European Legal History (Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte), won the Prize of the 41st German Legal History Conference in Saarbrucken.

The volume starts by introducing the history of criminal law, of criminal proceedings and substantive criminal law as well as the reform debates of the 18th century. It continues with a focus on the legal consciousness of the authors who participated in the Bern Prize Question on Criminal Legislation (Berner Preisfrage zur Kriminalgesetzgebung), which was announced in 1777. Those submissions allow Luther to reconstruct a broad spectrum of opinions on criminal legislation. His work is firmly in the tradition that takes legal history to be the history of legal thought, and he focuses on the concretization of such thought in draft laws.

Go to Editor View