Legal reasoning 2
Basic rights are essential for our societies. All of them are equally important and have to be protected. However, there are situations in which basic rights are in conflict. For instance, what happens if a journalist takes pictures of a celebrity? The celebrity has the right to privacy and the journalist the right to freedom of press. Which basic right should be protected in this specific case? What can make such a decision rational?
According to penal code, offenders should not be punished in light of exculpatory circumstances. However, legal experts and laypeople seem to respond differently to exculpatory circumstances: while experts weight them according to penal code, laypeople weight them according to how morally outraging the offence is. But how do laypeople decide between conflicting basic rights? In this project we investigate how legal experts and laypeople weight conflicting basic rights. We compare experts’ and laypeoples’ decisions with legal theoretical constructs such as the weight formula (Alexy, 2003) and examine the rationality of such verdicts. In addition, we also investigate how probabilities and the believability of offences and circumstances affect legal reasoning and people’s legal decisions.
Contact: M.Sc. Benjamin Sklarek, Dr. L. Estefania Gazzo Castaneda, Prof. Dr. Markus Knauff
Project number: KN 465/10-2