author
Karl Binding
1841–1920
A major 19th-century German legal scholar, he became especially known for his work on criminal law and for a strict theory of retributive justice. His legacy is influential but also deeply troubling, because one later book he co-wrote was used by the Nazis in support of murderous policies.
1 Audiobook
Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens Ihr Maß und ihre Form; Zweite Auflage
by Karl Binding, Alfred Hoche
About the author
Born in Frankfurt am Main in 1841 and later dying in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1920, Karl Ludwig Lorenz Binding was a German jurist whose main field was criminal law. He taught as a professor of criminal law at the University of Leipzig for decades, from 1873 to 1913, and became one of the best-known legal scholars of his time.
Binding is remembered above all for his writing on punishment, especially his defense of retributive justice—the idea that punishment should answer wrongdoing in proportion to the offense. His legal work made him an important figure in German criminal-law theory and gave him a lasting place in the history of jurisprudence.
His reputation is also tied to a darker part of intellectual history. A later work written with psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens, was later used by the Nazis to justify the Aktion T4 euthanasia program, which makes discussion of his life and work impossible to separate from that harmful legacy.