German-Latin American conference on comparative criminal law

07/22/2024

From July 22 to 26, 2024, a conference on the current challenges of criminal law and criminal policy in Germany and Latin America took place in Würzburg.

This was a meeting of SIGLA, the “Sociedad Internacional Germano- Latinoamericana de Ciencias Penales”
(German-Latin American Society for Criminal Sciences).

The two presidents of the association are Prof. Dr. Leandro Eduardo Astrain, Guanojuato, Mexico, and Prof. Dr. Dr. Eric Hilgendorf, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg.

German criminal law has played a significant role in Latin America for many decades. German criminal law has been intensively received throughout Latin America since the 1950s, and German textbooks have also been (and continue to be) translated into Spanish. Currently, the criminal law commentary by Kindhäuser and Hilgendorf is the first German commentary to be translated into Spanish. The head of the translation project, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Marcelo Sancinetti (University of Buenos Aires), traveled to Würzburg in person with his wife Patricia Ziffer to attend the conference.

The event was the largest conference of its kind ever held in Germany. Over 130 legal scholars and practitioners had traveled from Latin America at their own expense to take part. The audience came from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Spain. Each contribution was discussed intensively. Particularly fruitful were not only the comparative legal perspectives between Germany and Latin America, but also the different points of view that became clear within Latin America.

The speakers included Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Marcelo Sancinetti, Buenos Aires (on the system of error in criminal law), Prof. Dr. Katharina Beckemper, Leipzig (on the general part of commercial criminal law), Prof. Dr. Jörg Eisele, Tübingen (on criminal responsibility for the operation of platforms), Prof. Dr. Jordi Nieva-Fenoli, Barcelona (on the future of criminal procedural law), Prof. Dr. Sebastian Scheerer, Hamburg (on criminology and international criminal law), Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Eugenio Zaffaroni, Buenos Aires (on criminal law dogmatics in Latin America), Prof. Dr. Patricia Ziffer, Buenos Aires (on the return of the discussion on permanent prison sentences) and Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Urs Kindhäuser, Bonn (on the theory of criminal attribution). Prof. Dr. Dr. Eric Hilgendorf gave a lecture on the idea of international criminal law.

The conference was organized by Prof. Hilgendorf's chair team together with Prof. Dr. Zuluaga from Colombia, who currently holds a professorship in Santiago de Chile. Dr. Murgia-Göbel, the head of the Spanish and Latin American specialist language program, was actively involved in the opening ceremony and also worked intensively in the background. In doing so, she made a significant contribution to the extraordinary success of the event.

One of the highlights of the conference was the appointment of the well-known Hamburg criminologist Sebastian Scherer as Honorary President of SIGLA. Prof. Dr. Katharina Beckemper, University of Leipzig, was appointed as the new Co-President on the German side. In addition, Prof. Cristina Montalvo (Universidad del Atlántico) was elected Co-President for the Latin American side. The next conference will take place in 2026, either in Leipzig or again in Würzburg.