Cultural and Religious Diversity under State Law across Europe (CUREDI)

Nikko Kulke is part of the Cultural and Relgious Diversity under State Law across Europe (CUREDI) research group. Within this project he is responsible for German criminal law, but also includes case law from the UK, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium in his research.

His individual project deals with the legitimacy of criminal law in multicultural societies. Inspired by Ottfried Höffe’s attempts to develop an Interkulturelles Strafrecht (“intercultural criminal law”) from a philosophical perspective, Kulke asks fundamental questions about the role of criminal law in multicultural societies and the approaches that can be used to justify it.

Specifically, Kulke draws on ideas familiar to criminal law, such as the doctrine of Rechtsgutlehre (“legal interests”) and examines the role of the ultima ratio (“the last resort”) principle of criminal law in the context of multicultural settings. In addition, he addresses various approaches from the philosophy of law and political theory and their legitimacy as standards of reasoning in light of multicultural societies, thereby providing a new perspective on the field of criminal law.