What is a just punishment? Does it even exist? For the passionate and eloquent criminal law expert, Thomas Fischer, it is a question of what holds our society together: a self-given rule book, i.e. our legal system that depends on many conditions and is in constant movement. Like no other field of law, public interest focuses on criminal law. As the basis of governance, it promises security, but it is also a place where the fundamental questions of social life, freedoms and responsibility are negotiated and debated. Fischer’s theory: criminal law is communication and violence. Nobody knows its development better than Fischer, a former German Federal Judge, who is famous far beyond his professional circles.
