2016 Annual Conference
2016 Annual Conference
2016 Annual Conference
‘Ethics and Law’ - ‘EthiK und recht’
Societas Ethica's 53rd annual conference | Bad Boll, Stuttgart, Germany, August 2016
2016 SOCIETAS ETHICA Jahreskonferenz - Übersicht
Wann ist Recht gerecht? Muss Gerechtigkeit Grundlage einer Rechtsordnung sein? Oder sollten Gesetze schlicht ein erträgliches Zusammenleben von unterschiedlichen Vorstellungen ermöglichen? Kann das Recht ohne Bezug zu einem ethischen Deutungsrahmen überhaupt mit Akzeptanz rechnen? Zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts stellen sich diese Fragen in einem globalen Horizont: Wie werden Fragen nach der universellen Geltung der Menschenrechte verstanden und umgesetzt? Wie sind transnationale Regelungen, die sich neben die demokratisch ausgehandelten Rechtssysteme stellen, zu bewerten?
Gefordert ist die Entwicklung einer Ethik, die den globalen Gerechtigkeitsansprüchen angemessen ist und den Maßstab globaler, internationaler, und nationaler Regulierungen darstellt. Diskutiert werden müssen unterschiedliche Rechtspraktiken und damit verbundene Wertvorstellungen. Anzufragen ist die Vereinbarkeit ethischer Standards mit Praktiken wie der Todesstrafe, lebenslanger Haft oder Einzelhaft. Eingefordert werden müssen die Menschenrechte für Flüchtlinge und Kinder. Neu auszuhandeln ist die Frage von Freiheit im Horizont digitaler Überwachungsmöglichkeiten und nach Meinungs- und Religionsfreiheit im transkulturellen Horizont. Bei diesen Themen bedarf es der interdisziplinären ethischen und rechtsphilosophischen Reflexion. Zusammen mit der Evangelischen Akademie Bad Boll möchte die Societas Ethica auf ihrer Jahrestagung 2016 die Debatten durch Vorträge, Diskussionen und Interventionen nachhaltig befördern: Zur Debatte steht das Verhältnis von Ethik, Recht und Gerechtigkeit in den aktuellen Konfliktfeldern.
2016 Societas Ethica Annual Conference - Overview
Careful reflection on the relation of ethics to law – and vice versa – is essential. Ethics is indispensable for law because the law can only be just insofar as it takes up ethical standards. Likewise, it is for moral reasons that ethics demands that political institutions establish, implement, and apply legal claims that are justified in and through ethical reflection. It is also important to reflect upon the scope and limits of norms and their intersection with plural hermeneutical interpretations of actions and/or practices. Furthermore, the ethical status of the (political) human rights framework must be clarified. What criteria does ethics offer for legal judgments, and what criteria does philosophy of law offer to moral reasoning? What impact does the theoretical analysis of moral and legal norms have on individual, social, and political actions? What is the role of 'understanding' or interpretation in the overall endeavor to 'judge well'? What is the moral function of the law in postmodern and globally interacting societies? Three contexts are of special interest for the discussion:
At the beginning of the 21st century, national law is complemented to a greater extent than in previous centuries by transnational, international, and global regulations and soft law, as is the case, for example, in transnational trade agreements and their related governance structures and conducts. The trend to a global ethics, global justice, and global structures of governance and institutional regulations reflects the complexity of the relation between ethics and law in a globalized world.
The European Union emerged as a community of commonly held values, now articulated in the European Charta of Fundamental Rights. However, with the arrival of about a million refugees at the borders of Europe in 2015, many moral and ethical questions about the legal frameworks of the EU have been raised. What are the implications of the current threats of human and political rights for the relation of ethics to law?
Keynote speakers
Dr. Klaus Guenther is the Chair of Legal Theory, Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. His research is in criminal law, legal fundamentals and international relations.
Dr. Klemen Jaklic is a constitutional scholar who works in the fields of European law, human rights, justice, constitutional pluralism and democracy. He is currently Fellow of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University, and has been teaching at Harvard since 2008. Dr. Jaklic is the author of Constitutional Pluralism in the EU (OUP 2014), and his earlier Democracy’s Third Coming: Europe as a Route to Humanity’s Third Historic Stage of Democracy won the Harvard Mancini Prize in 2011. Recently, he completed his mandate as member of the European Venice Commission and was, as one of four nominees of the President of Slovenia, in the running for selection as Judge at the ECtHR in Strasbourg.
Dr. Cristina Traina is Professor of Religion at Northwestern University. She is currently the president of the Society of Christian Ethics (USA). Professor Traina’s research areas include ethics of children, sexuality and production, and justice issues in bioethics and feminist ethics. Her most recent work is on economic rights and the labor rights of children. Recent publications include Natural Law and Feminist Ethics: the End of the Anathemas with Georgetown University Press in 1999 and Erotic Attunement: Parenthood and the Ethics of Sensuality between Unequals with University of Chicago Press in 2011.
Dr. Jurgen Moltmann is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Arguable the most well known Protestant German theologian of his time, Professor Moltmann has worked many years on themes of eschatology, Christology, and Trinitarian theology.
Dr. Hans Lindahl is the chair of legal philosophy at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He works in both legal and political philosophy. His Fault Lines of Globalization: Legal Order and the Politics of A-Legality, was published with Oxford University Press in 2013 (with an Italian translation in 2016). Dr. Lindahl is currently writing another book with the working title of Legal Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, under contract with Cambridge University Press in 2017.
The Case of Jens Soering - a presentation by Karin Steinberger
On 21 August 2016, the Annual Conference will feature a plenary presentation by Karin Steinberger that will feature the documentary, The Promise, by Karin Steinberger and Marcus Vetter. Watch the trailer below!