Kevin Jon Heller and Emmanouil Billis, two leading international experts in comparative criminal law, are coming to UiT to present on the foundations of the discipline. The lectures are livestreamed for anyone curious about methodological questions in comparative research on criminal justice, the background and application of central concepts in the field, or simply the role of criminal law in democratic societies.
The event is part of the PhD course JUR-8013 Comparative Criminal Law, arranged by ECO-CRIM-NET and the research group on Crime Control and Security Law. Attending this part alone does not give any course credits, but we do offer a certificate of participation. If you would like such a certificate, please contact Nandor Knust prior to the event at nandor.knust@uit.no. If you do not want a certificate, no login or registration is required.
The stream will keep going during the breaks, but with camera and microphone muted.
PROGRAM
09.30 Welcome
09.45 General Introduction: ECO-CRIM-NET. Nandor Knust
10.00 Comparative Criminal Law: Why Is It Important — and So Difficult? Kevin Jon Heller
11.00 Discussion
11:30 BREAK
12.00 Historical Background and Basic Concepts of Comparative Criminal Procedure: An Introduction to the common law – civil law divide. Emmanouil Billis
13.00 Discussion
13:30 BREAK
14.30 The Aims and Methods of Comparative Criminal Law Research: An Introduction to Functional Comparison and Ideal Types. Emmanouil Billis
15.30 Discussion
Emmanouil Billis
Emmanouil Billis is a lawyer at the Supreme Court of Greece, lecturer at the Hellenic Open University, and visiting research fellow of the Research Group ‘Crime Control and Security Law’ at the UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. From 2010 to 2023 he was Research Group Leader (2020-2023) and Senior Researcher (2010-2020) at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (formerly: Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law) in Freiburg (Germany). He completed his law studies at the Democritus University of Thrace (Greece) in 2005 and earned a master’s degree in criminal procedure at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2008. He was awarded an LL.M. from the University of Bonn (Germany) in 2010 for a thesis on issues of European criminal procedure and human rights law and was granted a doctorate from the University of Freiburg in 2014 for a dissertation on the role of the judge in adversarial and inquisitorial evidentiary proceedings. Dr. Billis has published extensively in English, German, and Greek on issues of criminal law and procedure, European and international criminal law, comparative criminal justice, and legal methodology. In 2017 the Max Planck Society presented Emmanouil Billis with the Otto Hahn Medal and the Otto Hahn Award for outstanding scientific achievements.
Kevin Jon Heller
Kevin Jon Heller is Professor of International Law and Security at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Military Studies and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. He is an Academic Member of Doughty Street Chambers in London and currently serves as Special Advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on War Crimes. Prof. Heller’s books include The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law (OUP, 2011) and four co-edited volumes: The Handbook of Comparative Criminal Law (Stanford, 2010), The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials (OUP, 2013), the Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law (OUP, 2018), and Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories (OUP, 2021). He is currently co-writing a book with Samuel Moyn (Yale) provisionally entitled The Vietnam War and International Law. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the international-law blog Opinio Juris, where he has blogged for more than 17 years. Prof. Heller has been involved in the practice of international law throughout his career, most notably acting as one of Radovan Karadzic's formally-appointed legal associates at the ICTY; serving as the plaintiffs’ sole expert witness in Salim v Mitchell, a successful Alien Tort Statute case against the psychologists who designed and administered the CIA’s torture program; functioning as UNITAD’s Special Expert for International Criminal and Humanitarian Law; and acting as legal advisor to and expert witness for Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the defendants in the 9/11 trial at Guantanamo Bay.
Nandor Knust
Nandor Knust is leader of ECO-CRIM-NET – a global network for the monitoring and investigation of crimes against ecosystems. Nandor Knust is a legal scholar educated in Frankfurt and Paris in the fields of Public International Law and Criminology and he gained practical experience during his time at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and working with international, regional and non-governmental organisations within the field of human rights, atrocity crimes and transitional justice. Before moving to the Arctic University of Norway to work as an associated professor within an interdisciplinary project on the use of new technologies to combat transnational organized crime - he was head of the ‘Section International Criminal Law’ at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (former Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law), deputy coordinator of the International Max Planck Research School on Comparative Criminal Law, – as well as coordinator of Max Planck Law: a network of nine different Max Planck Institutes.