In the 19th century in many Western states, the close relationship between Church and State came to an end and the Roman Catholic Church developed into a major and active player on social and educational level in society separate from the State.
This was due, on the one hand, to the constitutional changes in the Western states from the end of the 18th century, which led to the gradual introduction of the formal principle of separation of Church and State. On the other hand, it was a result of the search for a new position of the Roman Catholic Church in society that also influenced the theological reflection of the Church on society.
The ecclesiastical reflection on the ideal relationship between Church and State took shape in the course of this process in the Ius Publicum Ecclesiasticum. The ecclesiastical view on the relationship between believers/citizens, society and State simultaneously took shape in Catholic social doctrine, which today still offers a model for modern society. In Catholic social doctrine, the believer/citizen is the connecting element between Church and State in a secular society. The ‘state doctrine’ of the Catholic Church is presented in Catholic social doctrine as an ideal image of the democratic constitutional state in which man is central and forms the central link between Church, society and secular State.

Introducing the special issue, we point out how the notion of an ‘enemy of all humanity’ challenges the very foundations of international (criminal) law. We also give an overview of the other contributions.

Piracy holds a special place within the field of international law because of the universal jurisdiction that applies. This article reconsiders the role of piracy in the development of universal jurisdiction. While usually a connection is established between Cicero’s ‘enemy of all’ and modern conceptions of pirates, it is argued that ‘enemy of the human species’ or ‘enemy of humanity’ is a medieval creation, used by Bartolus, which must be understood in the wake of the Renaissance of the twelfth century and the increased interest for the study of Roman Law. The criminalization of the pirate in the late Middle Ages must be understood not only as a consequence of royal power claiming a monopoly of violence at sea. Both the Italian city-states and the Hanse may have preceded royal power in criminalizing pirates. All the while, political motives in doing so were never absent.

In the introductory article of this special issue on ‘moral entrepreneurs’ in the 21st century, we situate different notions of moral entrepreneurship. Particularly foregrounding Howard Becker’s definition, we discuss its origins and use in subsequent research. The question that we’ve put forward in the ‘call for papers’ for this special issue is to what extent the notion is relevant in contemporary research and who is considered as ‘moral entrepreneur’. The research papers discuss ‘entrepreneurial’ practices of university ethic commissions, medical professionals, police officers and the leaders of cannabis social clubs. We conclude that the underlying rationales and discourses of moral entrepreneurs that the authors identify, reflect contemporary neoliberal ideals.

This article introduces the concepts of play and playfulness within the context of legal-philosophical education. I argue that integrating play and playfulness in legal education engages students and prepares them for dealing with the perpetual uncertainty of late modernity that they will face as future legal professionals. This article therefore aims to outline the first contours of a useful concept of play and playfulness in legal education. Drawing on the work of leading play-theorists Huizinga, Caillois, Lieberman and Csikszentmihalyi, play within legal education can be described as a (1) partly voluntary activity that (2) enables achievement of learning goals, (3) is consciously separate from everyday life by rules and/or make believe, (4) has its own boundaries in time and space, (5) entails possibility, tension and uncertainty and (6) promotes the formation of social grouping. Playfulness is a lighthearted state of mind associated with curiosity, creativity, spontaneity and humor. Being playful also entails being able to cope with uncertainty. The integration of these concepts of play and playfulness in courses on jurisprudence will be illustrated by the detailed description of three play and playful activities integrated in the course ‘Introduction to Legal Philosophy’ at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

This article analyses the relation between Islam, politics and citizenship. It analyses three currents within Islam: Salafism, Islamism, and modernism. The central argument is that most modern Islamic currents do not have a concept of politics as an independent ‘field’ where compromises can be made concerning societal problems. The only current that provide the space for a pluriform, open political debate is Islamic modernism. Through its humanism and the centrality of the common good and not the text, modernism embraces not only the concept of politics as free space but also the concept of active citizenship.

Cultural Criminology (CC) is one of the most recent and exciting developments in criminological theory. Its main argument is that mainstream criminological theories provide inadequate explanations of crime due to epistemological and theoretical flaws. CC’s alternative involves assuming a phenomenological and interpretative approach that focuses on the cultural and emotional components of crime. In this article I shall argue that although CC makes a valid demand for more realistic and complex explanations of crime, its own alternative needs to deal with two main challenges referred to its conceptualization of explanation and emotion. First, two problematic antagonisms should be avoided: understanding vs. causal explanation; and universal nomothetic explanations as opposed to ideographic descriptions. Considering recent developments in philosophy of social science, particularly the ‘social mechanisms approach’, CC should focus on explaining retrospectively through identification of specific causal mechanisms rejecting universal and predictive pretensions. Second, although cultural criminologists rightly question the emotionless character of criminological explanations, they lack an articulated alternative conceptualization of emotions to explain crime. A more refined concept needs to be elaborated in dialogue with recent advances in social sciences.

Ever since the 2015 start of what is now often referred to as the European ‘migration crisis’, European member states have been struggling with one of the key fundaments of the European Union and in particular the Schengen Agreement: the principle of free movement. Whereas this principle entails that people should be able to move freely within the Schengen Area, as a result of the ongoing securitization and politicization of migration, Member States are exploring the different opportunities the Schengen Border Code allows them to monitor intra-Schengen cross-border mobility. In doing so, countries seem to have two options: either to temporarily reintroduce border controls or to – permanently – carry out police or immigration controls in an area around the border. In this article we explore and critically assess the choices various countries have made and what seems to be the position of the European Commission in all this.

This paper focuses on the practice of youth justice (termed ‘youth protection’ in Belgium) in which professional actors ascribe deviant behaviour of youngsters to different cultural and migration backgrounds. Intra-European Roma migrants and refugees from the Northern Caucasus in Belgium are chosen as case studies. Discourse analysis of 55 youth court files and 41 expert interviews with professional actors show that deviant behaviour of these young people is explained in different manners. Two discourses are identified: ‘criminal vagabonds’ and ‘war torn children’. These discourses and their effects in practice differ tremendously for both groups. The broader discussion this article touches upon is the selective inclusion and exclusion in the institutions of formal social control, through social practices of culturalisation.

The article examines the public debate about New Year’s Eve in Cologne in 2015. Theoretical starting point is the idea that public debates are forms of social communication in which reality is produced and social events become meaningful. On the basis of a framing analysis, it is investigated what significance New Year’s Eve in Cologne has as a medial event for society. The question here is how the event is described and explained, how it is mentioned and interpreted, what significance it collectively receives and how these insights can be theoretically interpreted. The analysis shows that different frames were possible, such as the problematization of the work of the police. Instead, the discourse focused on the sexual behaviour of refugees and securitization and sexualisation of migration takes place.

Changing ecological conditions in a globalizing world pose new challenges for human societies. Global warming, large-scale pollution, deforestation and species extinction have increasingly become topics on the international agenda. Even though many of these harmful activities are criminogenic, criminology pays rather little attention to environmental crimes and harms.
Therefore, this article discusses the anthropocentric perspective within criminology and argues that a non-anthropocentric criminology can lead to new theoretical insights.

Over the last twenty years, research on desistance from crime and on restorative justice has grown rapidly and both have emerged as exciting, vibrant, and dynamic areas of contemporary criminological interest. While the implementation of restorative justice practices in Europe has been essentially victim-oriented, there has always also been an emphasis on including the moral and social rehabilitation of the offender. This more offender-centred approach to restorative justice and its practices is not limited to the evaluation of its ability to reduce crime, but is to be seen within the connection between reparation, resettlement (reintegration into the community after sentence), and desistance from crime. This article examines, from a broad perspective, but including some data from research on victim-offender mediation in prison, the capacity of restorative justice interventions to impact positively on offenders’ likelihood of stopping committing criminal offences.

The nexus between religion and law is an important subject of comparative law. This paper, however, finds that the majority of comparative theorists rely on the immanent frame; that legal legitimacy can and should be separated from any objective truth or moral norm. But the fact of the matter is many constitutional systems were founded based on a complicated mixture between the transcendent and immanent frame. Whereas in the immanent frame, human actions are considered self-constituting, in the transcendent frame, human actions were judged in light of their correspondence to higher, divine laws and purposes.
This article argues that it is not sufficient for comparative theorists to offer a perspective from the immanent frame. Comparative theorists in law and religion should understand at least basic religious doctrines and know how to systematize those doctrines. In other words, comparative theorist of law and religion should work within the transcendent frame. By using a transcendent frame, comparative theorists will be able to excavate the underlying structure of religion, and so they will understand better how theological ideas influence law. Furthermore, this paper will also present a thought experiment in applying the transcendent frame in comparative constitutional studies.

This article focuses on the challenges facing Community Oriented Policing (COP) in an increasingly complex society. The authors describe how the Dutch police adresses this context through a new police organisation on a national basis, specified job protocols, intelligence led policing and higher educated specialists. Seeking for alternatives the authors argue that COP should be based on a problem centered approach which profits from the insights of local policemen and operational specialists. Adressing ambiguous problems will fail when only applying system logic. Instead, moral involvement and sensemaking are indispensable.

The term ‘Judeo Christian civilization’ dates from the second half of the twentieth century, but has of recent gained in popularity with politicians and policy makers. It seems to be no coincidence that this has a direct correlation with the debates on the position of Islam in Europe. This article is a critical assessment of the meanings of the various elements of this term: what is so Christian about European civilization, what is Judaism’s part therein, and what role does the Islam play? It is notable that one often considers this Judeo Christian ‘culture’ or ‘civilization’ as an uninterupted historical proces, while the second half of the twentieth century shows a clear rupture when it concerns values or the experience of religion. Also remarkable is that one often fails to make the differentiation between religion as a theological cult and as a culture carrier, or between the principles and the practice of a religion. As a consequence, the term ‘Judeo Christian civilization’ or ‘culture’ is being used in a very sloppy or selective manner, often with the purpose to exclude Islam.

‘Volksbuurten’ (marginal neighborhoods) in Brabant emerged from poverty and backwardness, but have developed their own way to deal with it. ‘Deviant behavior’, including forms of illegal and criminal activity, is important in there. That behavior gradually gets sustainable features. These neighborhoods are usually the result of conscious and active government policy; in particular the approach of ‘antisocial behavior’ in the forties and fifties of the last century has been important. In this article the author first sketches the outlines of this particular ‘volksbuurten’ culture, to focus then on the history of a particular street in one of those neighborhoods and its culture around 1960: the Ruisvoornstraat in Tilburg. Knowledge of the history of these neighborhoods is one of the keys to understanding the specifics of the history of Brabant and its partial intertwining with a culture of acting illegally and criminally.