Reforms of the German Criminal Code -Stock-taking and Perspectives - also from a Constitutional Point of View

Abstract

Once a major reform has been concluded, one might easily be tempted to be just glad about what has been achieved and to think that nothing more needs to be done. However, experience in Germany as regards the amendment of criminal law and law of criminal procedure has shown that “after the reform” has, at the same time, always meant “before the reform.” The history of German criminal law is the history of a never-ending reform. The reform has not only consisted in making individual corrections to the existing positive law; time and again, developments in society have posed new challenges to criminal law, which, in the course of time, have resulted in profound changes in its structure. This means that even after a reform has been concluded, there must be willingness to further shape criminal law or, as the case may be, to protect it from changes that might be brought about by new influences. German criminal law, with its more than 130 years of history, and with its almost 180 more or less profound amendments of the law, bears eloquent witness to the profound changes that criminal law can experience, in spite of individual extensive reforms, admittedly in a time of historical upheavals. The present contribution provides an outline of the history of German criminal law through the present time and tries, on the basis of this outline, to develop a forecast of the influence to which criminal law will be exposed in the future.