Nordic Criminal Law as a Normative Project

Nordic criminal law is often thought of as a distinctive tradition and mode of thinking about and making criminal law. But what are we talking about when we are talking about “Nordic criminal law”? Is Nordic criminal law worth appreciating, preserving, or perhaps even developing, and, if so, why? What about the increasingly clear indications that Nordic penal practice does not align with the dominant perception of Nordic criminal law?

Jørn Jacobsen’s Power, Principle, and Progress: Kant and the Republican Philosophy of Nordic Criminal Law (2024) addresses this multifaceted challenge of analysis and justification by developing a normative account of Nordic criminal law as a distinctive regional approach to the broader obligation of constructing and implementing a conception of criminal law as an essential part of the political arrangements necessary to promote external freedom. The event proceedings, including the panelists’ commentaries and the author’s response, will appear in a special online MCLR+ book forum.

The book is available online open access here https://oa.fagbokforlaget.no/index.php/vboa/index; for additional materials, please consult MCLR+ Resources (“Nordic Criminal Law”): https://crimlrev.net/mclr-resources ​

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Jørn Jacobsen (author) University of Bergen, Norway

Law Katja Franko University of Oslo, Norway, Criminology

Linda Gröning University of Bergen, Norway, Law

Marie Kagrell University of Stockholm, Sweden, Law

Kimmo Nuotio University of Helsinki, Finland, Law

Heikki Pihlajamäki University of Helsinki, Finland, Law