There are three research departments in the Institute: the Department of Criminal Law, the Department of Public Law, and the Department of Criminology. The Institute’s research focus includes both ‘basic’ (ie foundational or fundamental) research and, owing to its interdisciplinary approach to the legal and social sciences, applied research.
The appointment of a new executive team in 2019 came with a comprehensive reorientation of the key guiding principles for their research agendas. The goal of the research undertaken in the Department of Criminal Law is to deepen our understanding of criminal law and to stimulate further development at the national and international levels. Our basic research includes analysis of the normative premises and empirical foundations of the law in force and comparison of principles, rules, and practices in different legal systems. Some of the normative conclusions drawn from these analyses will form part of a transnational theory of criminal law. In addition to basic research, our work includes the development of proposals designed to improve criminal law and to adapt it to changing conditions in fragmented, digitalized, and globalized societies.
The research agenda of the Department of Public Law addresses the preventive aspects of security-related matters. Besides general theoretical and doctrinal questions, which in security law are frequently of heightened relevance, our research analyzes contemporary legal, technical, and social developments—internationalization, digitization, and fragmentation—along with associated normative challenges of danger prevention regarding fundamental rights protection, the rule of law, and democratic principles.
The research programme of the Department of Criminology focuses on the theoretical and empirical explanations for conforming and deviant behaviour. The objective is to explore how individual behaviour manifests itself ad hoc, how it changes or develops over time, and how it can be explained. To this end, drawing primarily on psychological theories, innovative new research methods are employed, including computer-assisted experiments using virtual reality software.
These complementary research approaches enable the Institute to address current security-relevant issues from a basic research perspective, analytically, and with an eye to influencing legal policy.