Information Law Possum (discontinued)

The Swiss Study Foundation is holding its second “Juristic Colloquium” in April, entitled “Emotions and the Law”. The format of the event may be named 2.0, as it is up to the participants (like me) to prepare the discussion for each session. The speakers are Franz Nyffeler, former justice at the Federal Supreme Court; Suzette Sandoz, Prof. em. and former member of the Federal Parliament; Urs Gasser, and his dad Peter, who is a Prof. emeritus of psychology.

Our session–with Suzette Sandoz as the principal speaker–deals with the relationship between emotions and the interpretation of the law. (As James confirmed today, the German term for this, “Juristische Methodenlehre”, is untranslatable: It means interpreting our statutes and codes–which are, for anglo-american standards, very vague in their wording–from different perspectives, e.g. analyzing the wording, systematic, history, purpose, constitutionality, etc. of a norm.)

Primarily to make up my mind myself on the topic, I decided to make a short case study, from which I hope to gain insight into the role emotions should play in the “Methodenlehre”.

Cannibalism.

Wikipedia says:

There is an innate disgust with the term cannibalism, which strikes at the heart of the most base of human activities. This social stigma has been used as an aspect of propaganda against an enemy by accusing them of acts of cannibalism to separate them from their humanity.

Emphasis added. Cannibalism still exists today. Wikipedia’s relating chamber of horror (text only, fortunately) can be found here. The Great Source of Knowledge also taught me that sexually motivated cannibalism is called vorarephilia. Apparently, the internet is playing an essential role in this context (quote from Wikipedia):

The wide use of the Internet has highlighted that thousands of people harbor sexualized cannibalistic fantasies. Discussion forums and user groups exist for the exchange of pictures and stories of such fantasies, a good example of which is provided by the works of Dolcett. Typically, people in such forums fantasize about eating or being eaten by members of their sexually preferred gender. The cannibalism fetish or paraphilia is one of the most extreme sexual fetishes. Very rarely do such fetishes leave the realm of fantasies, most being satisfied with pornographic stories, fetish art or photo modification (or completely computer generated images), with some enacting their fantasies in sexual roleplaying.

There have however been extreme cases of real life sexualized cannibalism, …

for instance the case of the famous Cannibal of Rotenburg:

In December 2002, a highly unusual case was uncovered in the town of Rotenburg in Hesse, Germany. In 2001 Armin Meiwes, a 41-year-old computer administrator, had posted messages … in Internet newsgroups on the subject of cannibalism, repeatedly looking for “a young Boy, between 18 and 25 y/o” to butcher. At least one of his requests was successful: Jürgen Brandes, another computer administrator, offered himself to be slaughtered. The two men agreed on a meeting. Jürgen Brandes was, with his consent, killed and partially eaten by Meiwes.

(Note the passive voice the Wiki author is using to describe the most horrible–or disgusting–part of the story.)

The legal follow-up in a nutshell:

• Meiwes was convicted for voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail.
• Upon appeal by the prosecution, the German Federal Court of Justice ordered a retrial upon in May 2005, and in May 2006 Meiwes was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment (which is the highest possible penalty in Germany).

One has to add that the perpetrators of many “ordinary” murders (i.e. all killings morally worse than voluntary manslaughter) are usually sentenced to between ten and twenty years of imprisonment in Germany.

The fact that someone has received the maximum sentence for committing a crime with the victim’s consent is puzzling and can only be explained with emotion–disgust.

As announced, I shall try to use the Rotenburg case to study the role of this emotion in the interpretation of law, particularly of the relevant section of the Swiss criminal code (which does not differ a great deal from the German one in this respect).