Fundamentos de Política criminal ofrece una visión original de temas clásicos. El autor procede a una sistematización de las diversas proposiciones empleadas comúnmente en la Política criminal: desde la regla nullum crimen sine lege, hasta la presunción de inocencia, pasando por la abolición de la pena de muerte y la tortura, así como el ne bis in idem. A juicio de su autor, es posible esa sistematización con base en tres principios (seguridad, legalidad y respeto de la dignidad), que diferencia de las diversas y abundantes reglas y sus consiguientes excepciones. De ahí el subtítulo que se ha dado a la obra: Un retorno a los principios, que es una mirada a los orígenes filosóficos, jurídicos y antropológicos del Derecho y de la Política. El autor elabora un estudio inductivo de los enunciados vigentes en las decisiones del legislador, la judicatura y la Administración, para indagar a continuación los principios que les dan sentido. De este modo, se asume la tarea de aportar una fundamentación racional a la práctica político-criminal del Estado: se hace patente la racionalidad interna de las decisiones cotidianas de la Política frente al delito y a la vez se aportan claridad y elementos de crítica de las decisiones político-criminales al uso.

This book launches a debate on the need to evaluate criminal policies and, what is more complex and ambitious, to develop an evaluation method. The contributions address topics such as the general methodology for evaluating public policy, preparing criminal statistics, and analyzing costs, cost-effectiveness and cost benefits. Additionally, the work explores the state of affairs in various countries including Spain, Sweden, USA, Germany and in the EU. It also examines issues such as the relationship between legislative evaluation and criminal principles and the constitutional courts’ control over criminal acts.

The book deals with two very important but imprecise terms in contemporary law, namely public policy and public morality. It is commendable that such a comprehensive work about general clauses has been prepared. They are the elements of the common good which refers directly to Article 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. The aim of these clauses is to protect the integrity of Polish legal order and the reason why they are applied boils down to the public interest. The clauses refer to the extralegal criteria of a moral, economic or political nature. That is why, for a legal practice, it appears vital that experts contribute to the clarification of their content and meaning as a legal categories. No less important is entrusting or leaving this task to the courts and other legal bodies. These efforts serve to ensure necessary flexibility in applying, in particular, the public policy clause – a safety valve of legal order. prof. Franciszek Longchamps de Bérier, Jagiellonian University in Kraków The theme of the volume and the studies included in it are very interesting and important from a cognitive and applied perspective. The authors of the book represent various academic circles and different legal disciplines, whereas their conclusiveness is an essential value of the presented analyses. Dr hab. Krzysztof Motyka, The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland The idea of the authors of the book to discuss the issues of “public policy” and “public morality” as legal clauses in Polish law against the background of legal solutions of the European Union and international law deserves recognition. It efficiently combines the findings of the legal doctrine and the judicial decisions which allows to view these problems not only from the theoretical and legal perspective, but also from a practical angle. The presented definitions, theoretical and legal considerations, as well as the rulings regarding the clauses of “public policy” and “public morality” constitute a starting point for the authors to formulate their own arguments and conclusions de lege lata and de lege ferenda. The authors also skillfully describe the afore-mentioned clauses and demonstrate their close relationship with constitutional axiology, emphasizing their limitative nature and homeostatic role. Dr hab. Paweł Cichoń, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland

More than forty years have passed since President Richard Nixon described illegal drugs as “public enemy number one” and declared a “War on Drugs.” Recently the United Nations Global Commission on Drug Policy declared that “the global war on drugs has failed with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.” Arguably, no other country has suffered as much from the War on Drugs as Mexico. From 2006 to 2012 alone, at least sixty thousand people have died. Some experts have said that the actual number is more than one hundred thousand. Because the war was conceived and structured by US policymakers and officials, many commentators believe that the United States is deeply implicated in the bloodshed. A War that Can’t Be Won is the first book to include contributions from scholars on both sides of the US–Mexico border. It provides a unique breadth of perspective on the many dimensions of the societal crisis that affects residents of both nations—particularly those who live and work in the borderlands. It also proposes practical steps toward solving a crisis that shows no signs of abating under current policies. Each chapter is based on well-documented data, including previously unavailable evidence that was obtained through freedom-of-information inquiries in Mexico. By bringing together views from both sides of the border, as well as from various academic disciplines, this volume offers a much wider view of a complex problem—and possible solutions.

This book examines the simultaneous protection of fundamental rights by various norms and jurisdictional organs, focussing on the multilevel protection of the principle of legality in Criminal Law.Written by accredited specialists in criminal law, constitutional law, international public law, and the philosophy of law, the majority of them ex-Counsels of the Spanish Constitutional Court, it addresses various manifestations of the principle of legality: the requirement of precision, the judicial subjection to law and the prohibition of bis in idem. It does so not only from a theoretical perspective, but also through a comparative study of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union and state constitutional courts. This practical approach characterizes the book, which culminates in a detailed analysis of the relevant ECtHR Judgement Del Río Prada v. Spain on the retroactivity of unfavourable jurisprudence."Multilevel protection of the principle of legality in Criminal Law" is a useful instrument of reflection for scholars of both the principle of criminal legality and the problems that arise from the concurrency of protective jurisdictions of human rights.

El origen de este volumen es un simposio organizado en Mayo de 2015 por el Instituto Cultura y Sociedad (ICS) de la Universidad de Navarra. El enfoque de este simposio era muy amplio, como se refleja en las contribuciones que se presentan en este volumen, las cuales abordan temas tan diversos como las conexiones entre la ética material de los valores de inspiración fenomenológica y la idea de Derecho natural, la distinción esfera de lo jurídico/esfera de lo moral, las críticas a la consideración de los derechos humanos como fundados en la ley natural, los motivos por los que tenemos ciertos hechos y deberes como consecuencia de actos sociales, el sentido y significado del término libertad cuando este es empleado en el marco del Derecho penal, o el examen de ciertas concepciones que pretenden reducir la Filosofía del Derecho a una serie de cuestiones psicológicas, sociales o históricas cuando, en realidad, ésta depende de una discusión sobre cuestiones de principios y no de una mera comprobación de hechos. Sin embargo, a pesar de la diversidad de los trabajos que conforman este volumen, puede decirse que son dos los aspectos fundamentales que éstos comparten: por un lado, la necesidad de fomentar el diálogo entre disciplinas diferentes como la Filosofía y el Derecho en torno a una cuestión central, a saber, la existencia de elementos pre-positivos, anteriores a toda legislación positiva y, por otro lado, la convicción de que estos elementos tienen una inteligibilidad propia. *** Der Ursprung des vorliegenden Bandes ist ein im Mai 2015 vom Instituto Cultura y Sociedad der Universität von Navarra veranstaltetes Symposium. Wie die verschiedenen Beiträge zeigen, war die Bandbreite des Symposiums sehr weit gefasst. So wurden Themen behandelt wie die Zusammenhänge zwischen der phänomenologischen materialen Wertethik und der Idee des Naturrechts, die Unterscheidung zwischen der sittlichen und der rechtlichen Sphäre, die Kritik an denjenigen Theorien, die die Menschenrechte im Naturrecht verorten, die Motive, die uns dazu veranlassen, gewisse Tatsachen und Pflichten als Folgen sozialer Akte zu betrachten, der Sinn des Wortes „Freiheit“ im Rahmen des Strafrechts oder die kritische Prüfung derjenigen Auffassungen, die die Rechtsphilosophie auf eine Reihe von psychologischer, sozialer bzw. historischer Fragen zu reduzieren versuchen, wenn sie in Wahrheit auf einer Diskussion über Grundsatzfragen und nicht auf reiner Tatsachenüberprüfung beruht. Trotz ihrer Vielfalt haben alle Beiträge zwei Aspekte gemeinsam: einerseits teilen sie die Überzeugung der Notwendigkeit eines Dialogs zwischen so verschiedenen Disziplinen wie der Philosophie und dem Recht, um die zentrale Frage nach dem Bestehen von vor-positiven Elementen des Rechts aufzuklären, die jeder positiven Gesetzgebung vorangehen; andererseits sind sie der Überzeugung, dass solche Elemente ihre eigene Verständlichkeit haben. This volume contains the proceedings of a conference organized in May 2015 by the Instituto Cultura y Sociedad (University of Navarra). The scope of this conference was very wide as is proved by the variety of the contributions. They deal with such topics as the relationships between material value ethics and the idea of natural law, the distinction between the moral sphere and the sphere of law, the criticisms of those theories which ground human rights in natural law, the motives which lead us to consider certain facts and duties as consequences of social acts, the meaning of “freedom” in criminal law or the critical exam of such views which try to reduce the Philosophy of Law to some psychological, social or historical questions. However, despite their diversity, the contributions share two elements: on the one hand, the emphasis of the necessity of a dialogue between such different disciplines as Philosophy and Law focusing on a central question, namely, the existence of pre-positive elements, prior to every positive legislation and, on the other hand, the conviction that such elements have an own intelligibility.