Karl Binding

Born in Frankfurt am Main in 1841, Karl Ludwig Lorenz Binding became one of Germany’s best-known jurists, specializing in criminal law. He taught at several universities during his career and is especially associated with the University of Leipzig, where he served for many years as a professor.

Binding was known for his writing on penal theory, especially his defense of retributive justice—the idea that punishment should answer wrongdoing in a morally proportionate way. His scholarship made him an influential figure in German legal thought, and his books were widely discussed in his own time.

He is also remembered for a much more troubling reason. Late in life, he co-wrote Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens with psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, a work that was later used by the Nazis in support of their euthanasia program. Because of that legacy, Binding is studied today not only as an important legal thinker, but also as a warning about how intellectual arguments can be taken up in destructive ways.