Factors justifying not presuming innocence are generally incorporated into the Presumption of Innocence (PoI). A confusing discourse has resulted: numerous guilt-presuming acts are deemed consistent with the PoI. I argue for an unusually broad PoI: any act that might convey to a reasonable actor that he is not presumed innocent of a punishable offence constitutes a PoI interference. Thus, academic debate need only be about the question what PoI interferences are justifiable or unjustifiable. This question must be answered using pro- and anti-PoI values. I analyse three PoI interferences in relation to Duff’s retributivist punishment theory: presumptions of guilt, vicarious liability of car owners and coercing non-suspects into proving their sobriety. Retributivists tend to castigate such procedures based on their (supposed) consequentialist rationale. I argue, however, that they might also be justified on retributivist grounds. The retributivist anti-PoI duty to punish the guilty may be the worst enemy of innocents.

Antony Duff proposes a comprehensive concept of the presumption of innocence, covering the period before, during and after a criminal process, both in an official (state vs. individual) and a non-official, civic sense. By that broad usage, the concept of presumption of innocence is getting blurred and risks losing its contours. I therefore suggest to keep separate matters separate. The presumption of innocence in the narrow sense that I suggest applies only where there exists a suspicion that an individual has committed a criminal offence. The important function of the presumption of innocence in that situation is to prevent an over-extension of state power against the individual under suspicion before that suspicion has been confirmed to be true beyond a reasonable doubt. A general presumption that all people abide by the law at all times is neither warranted nor necessary. It is not warranted because experience tells us that many people break some laws sometimes. And it is not necessary because a system of civil liberties is sufficient to protect us against official or social overreach based on a suspicion that we may commit crimes.

In my response to Duff I focus mainly on the following two issues. Firstly, I examine what kind of a norm the presumption of innocence (PoI) really is and how it ontologically differs from other types of rules, principles, rationales, etc. My tentative conclusion is that a PoI does not suffice the requirement of being a dogmatic rule and, thus, has less weight than what Duff perhaps assumes.
Secondly, I examine what role the concept of innocence plays in the debate on fundamental (moral and legal) principles and the underlying rationales of a criminal law system. Although I am sympathetic to much of what Duff purports in his plea for civic trust and a parsimonious use of criminal law, I am reluctant to believe that it is really a broader version of a PoI that warrants the kind of morally decent criminal law system that he suggests normatively ought to be. In my view, most of what Duff wants to ascribe to the PoI can be derived from a principle of fairness which, in my view, is already embedded in the fundamentals of criminal law doctrine.

Duff sets out to present, not theoretical concepts, but ‘real’ principles that underlie positive law. This paper examines whether Duff’s analysis really reflects current law. To that end, this paper analyses the case law of the European Court on Human Rights. As far as his preposition that there are many presumptions of innocence is concerned, Duff seems to be right. In the case law of the European Court different presumptions can be discerned, with different rationales. However, these presumptions are a far cry from the trust principle Duff advocates. Indeed, a principle that prescribes trust cannot be found in the Court’s case law. There might be a unifying principle but if so this principle is about respect for human dignity rather than trust. This analysis serves as a basis for criticism. It is argued that the approach Duff proposes is in tension with the Court’s case law in several respects.

This paper explores the roles that the presumption of innocence (PoI) can play beyond the criminal trial, in other dealings that citizens may have with the criminal law and its officials. It grounds the PoI in a wider notion of the civic trust that citizens owe each other, and that the state owes its citizens: by attending to the roles that citizens may find themselves playing in relation to the criminal law (such roles as suspect, defendant, convicted offender and ‘ex-offender’), we can see both how a PoI protects us, beyond the confines of the trial, against various kinds of coercion, and how that PoI is modified or qualified as we acquire certain roles. To develop and illustrate this argument, I pay particular attention to the roles of defendant (both during the trial and while awaiting trial) and of ‘ex-offender,’ and to the duties that such roles bring with them.

In Das Recht der Freiheit Axel Honneth develops his concept of social freedom. In this article I discuss Honneth’s project and critique one of its crucial aspects: Honneth’s views on the disruptive role of legal freedom in our society and its dependent relation to the sphere of social freedom. I argue that in his attempt in Das Recht der Freiheit to reactualize Hegel’s discourse on the realization of freedom for our time, Honneth risks mistranslating Hegel’s discourse of ‘right’ by denying the sphere of legal relations a constitutive role for true freedom, and that because of this Honneth’s own theory of social freedom suffers: it becomes less clear whether it can still offer helpful insights into the proper place of legal freedom in our society.

This article explores the themes of injustice and dehumanization in Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Yael Farber’s Molora, in which the story of the Oresteia is dramatized against the backdrop of post-apartheid South Africa. It is argued that both plays depict wrongdoers and victims alike as social outcasts. Thus, they can both be described with Paul Ricoeur as ‘sketches of a man,’ not being able to live up to their full human potential. Borrowing from Ricoeur’s legal philosophy, it is then explained how public trials and hearings help them to reintegrate into society, in which they can regain their full humanity.

The paper argues that we miss the point and strength of Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law if we take it to drive a middle way between reductionism and moralism. Rather conversely, the Pure Theory is a radical theory. It tries to overcome the opposition between reductionism and moralism by making clear that both opponents rest on the same ill-conceived convictions about legal validity. Both take it that the law cannot be normative by itself. In contrast, the Pure Theory tries to find a new approach to the understanding of law that takes seriously the constitutive functions of law. It tries to understand the validity of law as resting in law itself. As such it is an attempt to find a philosophically satisfactory formulation of what can be called absolute positivism.

This article examines what limitations to private property John Locke recognizes to protect the rights of the poor. As has been pointed out in the literature, Locke’s ideas on the limitations to private property have been influenced by medieval discussions about the rights of the poor and the principle of extreme necessity. Confirming this interpretation, the article shows that Locke borrows the distinction between ‘ordinary need’ and ‘evident and urgent necessity’ from Thomas Aquinas. Taking position in a debate among Grotius and Pufendorf, Locke argues that the poor have a natural right to the ‘surplus’ of somebody else’s possessions, and that this right becomes legally enforceable in case of ‘evident and urgent necessity.’

This article addresses the possibility of deriving ought from is. To that purpose it casts doubt on the very distinction between is and ought; distinguishes between duties, obligations, being obligated and owing to do something; revitalises Searle’s famous derivation of ought from is by replacing promises with contracts; and discusses some of the traditional objections against this derivation. The conclusions are that it is not problematic at all to ‘derive’ the existence of obligations from solely is-premises, and that it is not very problematic to ‘derive’ an ought from the existence of an obligation. The quotes around ‘derive’ signal that the nature of derivation also plays a role in this discussion.

This paper concentrates on the dynamic tension between law as it is ‘made’ by legal professionals, functioning as homo faber, and law as it is experienced by citizens, functioning as homo agens. In between those two worlds, law develops as a human condition, a term borrowed from Hannah Arendt. It is argued that, in regard to law development and administration of justice, the function of homo agens should have priority over the function of homo faber. The two basic faculties that connect the two worlds are judgment and speech. This leads to further thoughts on the character of judgment as ‘participatory judgment,’ the function of ‘middle terms’ in legal language and the concept of ‘shared responsibility.’