CALL FOR PAPERS: Brazilian Journal of Criminal Procedure - Special issue on the history of criminal procedure (DEADLINE: 15 May 2021)

(Source: ibraspp.com.br)

In order to broaden its scope and the quality of the scientific articles published, the editorial board of Revista Brasileira de Direito Processual Penal announces a public call for authors to a thematic dossier on the history of criminal procedure, that will be published in 2021.

Contributions can be written in English, Spanish, Portuguese or Italian, and will be submitted to peer review. The editors are professor Ricardo Sontag (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) and professor Georges Martyn (Ghent University). More info can be found on the website of the journal or please contact Georges.Martyn@UGent.be.

Contributions, to be submitted by May 15^th, 2021, should touch aspects of ‘modernity’ of criminal procedure: Modernity - which we will limit to, for the purposes of this dossier, taking into account local variations, the period that goes from the end of the 18th century, has in the 19th century a period of extraordinary importance, and prolongs into the 20th century - has known important changes in criminal procedure, some with more distant origins, others less. Criminal procedure, as the juridical dimension of criminal justice practices, is an extremely relevant part of the formation of the modern State, whose connections with society and with the legal rule have been profoundly transformed during this period. Between demands to promote ‘public’ security on the one hand and individual freedom on the other, much changed in the relationships between political power (and its institutionalization in the Public Prosecutor), victim and defendant; as well as in the role of the various formal sources of law (legislation, case-law, doctrine, foreign influences, etc.) and of the judges; the configuration of new procedural models in connection with the problem of evidence and criminal prosecution; the role of publicity and public opinion (including the institution, as well as the crises, of the jury); and these are only a few examples. Many problems arose at the crossroads of the ongoing ‘civilization’ tendency of criminal justice and the expansion of State control machinery. The historiography of the last decades has been exploring ever more the rich diversity of sources: history of criminal justice (focusing on sociological aspects) and history of law (focusing on dogmatic aspects) are no longer incommunicable planets. All the aspects mentioned above, even though institutes and mere legal aspects of criminal procedure, can also be studied from a broader historiographical point of view. Perhaps this is even one of the main features of the historiography of the last decades, that broke with the principle that there would be sources relevant exclusively to historians of law - the “legal” ones - and others that would be the exclusive research material, for example, for social historians. The idea is to consider the law as it is established in a certain context, with connections, at each moment of a different nature, with other sectors. This call for papers aims, therefore, to include studies that address the legal dimension of criminal justice in Modernity.