About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

1 Eur. Crim. L. Rev. 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/euclr1 and id is 1 raw text is: 



European Criminal                                            EuCLR

Law Review                                                   No. 1 2011
                                                             Volume 1
                                                             Pages 1-104




                                                                Editorial


   Tempora mutantur! Some ten years ago, criminal law still lived in the shadows of
the gardens of European politics and European law. Today, thought and debate on
Europe that fails to touch on issues such as the 'European influence on criminal law'
or - increasingly - 'European Criminal Law', is almost inconceivable. The mean-
while indisputable importance of European criminal law has not, however, been the
only and decisive motive for the editors to publish a new law journal, the European
Criminal Law Review (EuCLR), which henceforth, will be published three times a
year. In actual fact, it is owing to other reasons that, with this first issue, we present a
new forum for academics, practitioners, politicians and legislators in Europe with an
interest in Criminal Law: In our view, a frustrating and indeed detrimental gap exists
between a still underdeveloped scientific and political exchange on the one hand,
and the importance of European criminal law issues, which can hardly be over-
estimated, on the other. It is this gap which the EuCLR wants to bridge in the years
to come.
  Deficiencies of discussion, notwithstanding a number of valuable initiatives in the
past, can be identified on several levels: In the first place, there are considerable
trenches between all those who deal with identical issues and problems, but in
different Member States of the European Union. Secondly, communication and 'cross-
pollination' between academics and practitioners dealing with European criminal law
must be qualified as highly underdeveloped; and finally, it seems to us that there is a
lack of constructive discussion between the actual or supposedly existing 'camps',
which - inaccurately and to a somewhat exaggerated extent - could be summarised
as the 'European criminal law sceptics' on the one hand, and the 'European
protagonists' on the other.
  As a result of these shortcomings, the topics relevant to all Member States have
been discussed separately, in parallel, rather than in common debates. The frustrating
lack of communication between academics and the 'real world' - by no means a
European peculiarity, but known to be the case in most Member States - has
reached a new and threatening dimension in the European Union. A functioning
academic community throughout the Union has not yet come into being. Politi-
cians, police officers and prosecutors, however, already form a small but well-
functioning 'in-group'. To make things worse, the 'sceptics' and the 'protagonists'

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most