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Criminal Theory and International
Human Rights Law

The development of an international human rights jurisprudence on criminaliza-

tion is in its relative infancy. Nonetheless, systematic examination of inter-
national decisions on acts engaging the criminal law reveals an emerging human
rights approach to the acceptability, or not, of criminalization. This book pro-
vides an in-depth characterization of the reasoning and principles that underpin
those decisions.
The work builds upon and adds value to existing literature by bringing
together two fields of study – international human rights law and criminal
theory – that usually receive separate treatment. It provides an in-depth analysis
of human rights criminalization jurisprudence and presents a systematic identifi-
cation of underlying reasoning and concepts that influence international human
rights decisions on criminalization. The work thus advances both fields inde-
pendently, as well as providing an example of inter-(sub)disciplinary analysis.
The book will be a valuable resource for academics and students working in the
areas of International Human Rights Law, Criminal Law, and Moral Philosophy.

Steven Malby is Head of the Office of Civil and Criminal Justice Reform at the
Commonwealth Secretariat, London, and an adjunct lecturer in international
human rights law at the University of Essex. He previously worked for the Div-
ision for Treaty Affairs at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,
Vienna. He qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales, and holds a doctoral
degree in law from the University of Göttingen, Germany.
Routledge Research in Human Rights Law

Challenging Territoriality in Human Rights Law

Building Blocks for a Plural and Diverse Duty-Bearer Regime
Wouter Vandenhole

Care, Migration and Human Rights

Law and Practice
Siobhán Mullally

China’s Human Rights Lawyers

Advocacy and Resistance
Eva Pils

Indigenous Peoples, Title to Territory, Rights and Resources

The Transformative Role of Free Prior and Informed Consent
Cathal M. Doyle

Civil and Political Rights in Japan

A Tribute to Sir Nigel Rodley
Edited by Saul J. Takahashi

Human Rights, Digital Society and the Law

A Research Companion
Edited by Mart Susi

Criminal Theory and International Human Rights Law

Steven Malby

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-

Research-in-Human-Rights-Law/book-series/HUMRIGHTSLAW
Criminal Theory and
International Human
Rights Law

Steven Malby
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2020 Steven Malby
The right of Steven Malby to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-18227-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-06021-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Galliard
by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.
Contents

Tables and figures viii

Preface ix
Abbreviations xi

1 Introduction 1
Bringing the two fields together 3
Defining the criminal offence 8
The scope of international human rights law 11

2 An international human rights law approach 15

Subjects and violations 16
Applying international human rights law to criminalization 20
A note on human rights and human duties 23
Summary 26

3 Rights in criminal theory 27

Use of rights in criminal theory – Feinberg’s welfare interest rights 29
Challenges with welfare interest rights 33
Rights, wrongfulness, and harm 40
Further notions of rights – continental legal theory 45
Summary 49

4 Crime and criminalization obligations in international human

rights law 50
The general security of person obligation 52
The specific crime prevention obligation 56
The general crime investigatory obligation 60
Summary 64
vi Contents
5 Criminalization in human rights treaties 65
Criminalization obligations in human rights treaties 71
ICERD Article 4 71
CAT Article 4 73
OP-CRC-AC Article 4 and OP-CRC-SC Article 3 74
CPED Articles 4 and 25 77
Lessons from human rights treaty-based criminalization 78
Summary 84

6 Criminalization in human rights cases 85

Direct negative and positive criminalization cases 86
Conviction cases 89
Investigatory and procedural obligation cases 94
Criminalization cases – acts and rights 96
Criminalization cases – outcomes 101
Summary 109

7 Reasoning in criminalization cases 110

Societal interests 113
Autonomy 116
Harm and offense 118
Community consensus 122
Human dignity 124
Other grounds of reasoning 127
Criminal theory concepts 128
ECHR structural principles 132
Paternalism and vulnerability 137
Links between grounds of reasoning 138
Summary 145

8 Differences between criminal theory and an international human

rights law approach 147
Vertical and horizontal rights 147
Dignity, vulnerability, and pluralism 153
Multi-factorial reasoning 157
The margin of appreciation 162
Summary 166

9 The value of international human rights law for criminal theory 168
Rethinking rights 174
Balancing considerations 177
 Contents vii
Criminalization outcomes 179
The role of consensus 180
Summary 182

10 Conclusion 183

References 190
Table of ECHR criminalization cases by crime classification,
outcome, and reasoning 208
Index 230
Tables and figures

Tables
4.1 Five Crime, Criminalization, and Human Rights Obligations 52
9.1 Comparison of Attributes of Criminal Theory and an International
Human Rights Law Approach to Criminalization 172

Figures
6.1 ECHR Criminalization Cases by Outcome and ICCS Level 1 102
7.1 ECHR Criminalization Cases by Outcome and Underlying
Reasoning 143
Preface

The aim of this book is to provide a bridge between two legal fields, both of
which address the human situation in a fundamental way but have not thus far
been examined together. Criminal theory seeks to deliver a critical moral
account of when and why the state may use punitive measures with the express
stigma of a criminal conviction to deter and punish certain conduct. Inter-
national human rights law proclaims civil, political, economic, social, and cul-
tural rights for each individual, in pursuit of freedom from fear and want for all.
Each field has become a legal specialism in its own right, with its own immense
literature, terminology, concepts, and dedicated academics and practitioners. Yet
careful analysis of international human rights treaties and case law in particular
shows a deep principled concern with, what amounts to, a subject of criminal
theory: the rights-based reasons why a state should, can, or should not criminal-
ize certain conduct. This book undertakes a detailed study of this part of inter-
national human rights law, with reference to the case law of international
human rights courts and tribunals. It asks whether and how such jurisprudence
can have value for the development of criminal theory. In order to answer this
question, it also contains a discussion of existing approaches to the use of rights
within Anglo-American and continental legal theory. In doing so, the book
adopts a cross-disciplinary approach that should appeal both to criminal theorists
and to international human rights law lawyers.
Each chapter may be read in its own right, but the chapters are intended to
build on each other, linking the two fields and developing directions for further
research. The book draws, in particular, from analysis of a group of almost 80
cases from the European Court of Human Rights that address matters of crim-
inalization. The underlying reasoning in this group of cases was subject to classi-
fication and semi-quantitative analysis. A table at the very end of the book
details the cases and their judgment reasoning. References are provided as foot-
notes to the text in abridged form. A full reference list, including United
Nations documents, treaties and legislation, and cases, is provided. Within the
book, the terms “criminal theory,” “criminal law theory,” and “criminalization
theory” are used largely interchangeably. The author expresses his sincere thanks
to those who provided the professional and personal inspiration for this book, as
well as invaluable suggestions and critical review. Thanks are due in particular to
x Preface
Ms Eva Ignatuschtschenko, Mr and Mrs J. Malby, Mr Reg Pritchard, Dr Anna
Alvazzi del Frate, and the author’s doctoral supervisors, Prof Kai Ambos and
Prof Jörg-Martin Jehle of the Georg-August University of Göttingen. The
author also wishes to thank the two anonymous reviewers from Routledge, as
well as Ms Alison Kirk and Ms Emily Summers of Routledge for their profes-
sional and timely guidance at all stages in the publication process. The views
expressed are those of the author only and do not represent the views or
endorsement of the Commonwealth Secretariat or any other organization. As
ever, any errors that remain are my sole responsibility.
Abbreviations

CAT Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrad-

ing Treatment or Punishment
CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women
CPED International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from
Enforced Disappearance
CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child
CRPD Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
ECHR European Convention on Human Rights
ECtHR European Court of Human Rights
IACHR Inter-American Court of Human Rights
IACommHR Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
ICCS International Classification of Crimes for Statistical Purposes
ICERD International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination
ICESCR International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
ICMW International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All
Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families
OP-CRC-AC Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on
the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict
OP-CRC-SC Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on
the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography
UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights
1 Introduction

If criminal theory and international human rights law were ever considered the sole
domain of philosophers, lawyers, and legislators, the critical questions with which
they deal have undoubtedly been pushed into the mainstream. The terms “crimin-
alization” and “human rights” are now common parlance. Debates on the criminal-
ization, and perhaps more frequently decriminalization, of conduct emerge in the
media on a regular basis. Such debates include whether conduct as diverse as forced
marriage, squatting, polygamy, possession of narcotic drugs for personal use, and
prostitution should or should not be a criminal offence. The criminal law makes
headlines around the world when individuals are convicted and incarcerated, or
even sentenced to death, for acts such as adultery, blasphemy, and apostasy. At the
same time, human rights are often portrayed as at a global juncture, openly ques-
tioned by some and lamented as in demise by others, in the context of polarized
societies and moves away from global dialogue and multilateralism.
Contemporary phenomena such as the misuse of global information and com-
munications technologies, violent extremism, and terrorism increasingly present
complex challenges to safe and peaceful societies. As governments develop new
criminal law responses, an expanding reach of criminalization risks threatening
the rule of law and a proportionately restrained criminal law. New criminal laws
such as encouraging or preparing for acts of terrorism may come up against spe-
cific human rights law objections. The need for a principled criminal law,
guided by external values and standards, is as great as ever.
Whilst the proper extent and nature of the criminal law have been a topic of
intense academic debate from the time of John Locke, Jean-Jacque Rousseau,
and Immanuel Kant, recent waves of development of criminal law theory have
both reflected and ignited societal concern over the correctness of the scope of
criminal liability. The influential 2007 text by Douglas Husak on overcriminali-
zation, for instance, encapsulates an argument that the United States suffers
from too much criminal law and too much punishment,1 a theme subsequently
emphasized at the political level by the Over-Criminalization Task Force of the
Committee on the Judiciary of the United States House of Representatives.

1 Husak, D., 2007.

2 Introduction
Criminal theorists assert that the heart of the problem lies in the absence of a viable
account of criminalization. A gap that Husak suggests is perhaps the single most
glaring failure of penal theory. The criticism is that theorists, legislators, and judges
have had too little to say about the proper scope of criminal law. As noted by Anthony
Duff, if not directly about what kinds of conduct should or should not be criminal-
ized, then at least about the considerations that should bear on questions of
criminalization, and about the procedures through which such questions should be
settled. This includes justification not only as to which acts should count as crim-
inal offences but also as to when and why we should prefer criminalization to other
possible ways of responding (or not responding) to such acts. As Duff notes, in
a nutshell, we need to be clear about why rape, tax evasion, and driving when
uninsured are properly criminal, as well as about why sexual infidelity and rudeness
are not.2
Recent years have seen a renewed focus on outlining, if not a theoretical frame-
work for criminalization, then at least guiding moral and legal principles for use of
the criminal law.3 Nonetheless, the literature is still far from a settled account of
acceptable criminalization. Criminalization theory typically invokes an abundance
of terms and concepts, including harm, offence, wrongfulness, morality and moral-
ism, paternalism, culpability, public concern, legal goods, ultimo ratio (last resort),
deterrence, and retribution. Such concepts may be found in a range of combin-
ations, relationships, and interactions. A number of contemporary commentators
have begun to coalesce around the idea that there is no unified, grand theory for
criminalization but rather that basic elements may interact to make or deny a case
for criminalization. Nonetheless, views on the exact content, place, and interrela-
tionship of individual criminalization concepts remain incredibly diverse.
This perceived lack of clarity in the philosophical account of criminalization is not
unrelated to an equivalent criticism made by Dennis Baker: that even the legal
boundaries of criminal offences – and specifically their relationship with moral
limits – are equally undefined.4 In practice, such legal limits are often expressed
through constitutional limits on the criminal law. Constitutional constraints on the
substantive criminal law are found, for example, in the US and German
constitutions.5 Such constraints include the human rights and fundamental freedoms
enshrined in most national constitutions. The existence of constitutional rights-based
challenges to the criminal law has long been recognized by criminal theorists, who
variously have either tried to rationalize criminalization findings of constitutional
courts with reference to criminal theory or argued that constitutional rights are
unsuitable as the cornerstone of a general theory of criminalization.6 Whether from

2 Duff, R.A., 2010, pp.16–19.

3 See, for example, Simester, A.P., and von Hirsch, A., 2011; Ashworth, A., and Horder, J.,
2013; Matravers, M., 2016.
4 Baker, D.J., 2011, p.1.
5 Bendor, A.L., and Dancig-Rosenberg, H., 2016; Lagodny, O., 1999.
6 Baker, D.J., 2011, pp.245–254; Simester, A.P., and von Hirsch, A., 2011, pp.134–137.
 Introduction 3
a legal or philosophical perspective, however, a clear area for enquiry emerges: the
need for a viable account of criminalization and the potential role of human rights in
determining such an account. As López-Rey asserted from the legal-political perspec-
tive, over 40 years ago, crime is what is defined by law as such. On the other hand,
the definition must take into account the existence of, and respect for, human rights
and not merely be the expression of arbitrary power.7
This book is concerned with exactly that issue. Whilst human rights take many
forms in both the domains of legal positivism and legal theory, the focus here is
specifically on human rights as contained in international human rights law. From
a global perspective, international human rights law stands as the only common
international legal framework that can be applied across a range of modern
dilemmas and that aims to clearly delineate state responsibilities and individual
entitlements. The rights contained in international human rights law are often the
same, or similar, to those protected by national constitutions. International human
rights law, as a field in its own right, however, has its own jurisprudence, its own
dedicated international mechanisms, and, as this book examines, its own approach
to questions of criminalization.
International human rights law cannot be viewed as a substitute for domestic
criminal or civil law. However, the positive international obligations of states to
ensure realization of human rights will only be fully discharged if individuals are
protected by the state, not just against violations of rights by its agent but also
against acts committed by private persons or entities that would impair the
enjoyment of human rights. This includes in the exercise of due diligence to pre-
vent, punish, investigate, or redress harm caused by private persons or entities. At
the same time, however, criminal law and penalties must always themselves avoid
violating the rights of individuals. It seems almost self-evident that international
human rights law would have something to say about the proper exercise of
national criminal law. This book explores the differences between criminal theory
and an international human rights law approach to criminalization, and considers
whether gains may be achieved at the intersection of the two.

Bringing the two fields together

Whilst international human rights law jurisprudence on matters of substantive
criminal law exists, the relationship between international human rights law and
criminal theory has not been extensively or systematically explored. Rather, the
literature tends to either reflect a broad discussion of a possible place for rights
within criminal theory or be limited to examples of the human rights implications
of criminalization of limited specific conduct, such as the criminalization of home-
lessness or HIV transmission.8 Where legal theorists have attempted to integrate

7 López-Rey, M., 1978, p.11.

8 See, for example, Hörnle, T., 2016; Langley, E.E., and Nardi, Jr., D.J., 2010; Baker D.J.,
2009.
4 Introduction
a human rights discourse into criminalization theory, they have often not engaged
seriously with the framework and lessons of international human rights law. Rather,
many criminalization works are completed in isolation from developments in the
jurisprudence of international human rights law, preferring instead theories based
in welfare rights and deontological moral rights. One major recent initiative aimed
at developing a normative theory of criminalization, for example, largely limited its
discussion on the place of human rights in criminal theory to that of international
criminal responsibility.9 It is perhaps not surprising that the non-governmental
International Council on Human Rights Policy concluded in 2010 that there
remains an urgent need for a human rights-based narrative of crime and criminality
and responses to crime.10 In so far as any account of the criminal law must grapple
seriously with the concept of wrongdoing, it appears that such a project could
benefit significantly from a body of law and thought, such as international human
rights law, that proclaims itself to be a foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in
the world, as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.
The limited examination of criminal theory together with international human
rights law to date is perhaps all the more surprising in light of the fact that the two
fields share a number of common features. From the perspective of underlying legal
theory, both the notions of criminalization and human rights concern the idea of
constraint on action. The subjects of this constraint are, of course, different: primarily
states or public authorities in the case of international human rights law and individ-
uals or groups of individuals in the case of criminal law. Nonetheless, both fields
purport to guide their subjects, to a greater or lesser degree through the threat of
sanctions for violation, as to an acceptable range of actions. In this respect, both
fields share something of a common philosophical heritage from Enlightenment
thinkers. The work and philosophy of Immanuel Kant, for instance, are habitually
invoked in (separate) academic commentary on human rights and on
criminalization.11 Notwithstanding such elements of common heritage, however,
legal philosophical work related to criminalization and human rights tends to remain
compartmentalized. The elaboration of capability theory by Sen and Nussbaum, for
example, occurred primarily within the language and context of human rights
discourse. The theory is rarely discussed in the context of criminalization, despite the
importance of criminalization as a constraint on permissible human action.12 Con-
versely, well-known concepts that are inherent to many criminalization theories, such
as harm theory, find little place within academic discourse on human rights. Indeed,
academic commentators who systematically apply legal reasoning or moral and critical

9 Renzo, M., 2013.

10 International Council on Human Rights Policy, 2010, p.v.
11 In the field of human rights, see, for example, Demenchonok, E., 2009. In the field of crim-
inalization, see Richards, D.A.J., 1979b.
12 A number of commentators have recently started to acknowledge the notion of Sen’s capabil-
ities in the context of resources to be protected by the harm principle in criminalization
theory. See, for example, von Hirsch, A., 2014, p.249.
 Introduction 5
philosophy in such areas appear for the most part to identify themselves with the field
of either human rights or criminalization, but rarely both.
In the positivist legal world, the two bodies of law frequently occupy different posi-
tions in the national legal order. Human rights usually benefit from protection at the
constitutional level. Criminal offences, on the other hand, can be found in all of
primary legislation, in secondary legislation, and at common law. At the international
level, both human rights and specific criminal offences are also contained within bind-
ing regional and international legal instruments. However, the sociopolitical
processes which give rise to such instruments are frequently conducted separately and
with little reference to the other field. It is an oft-cited point, for example, that within
the United Nations system, international human rights instruments are developed in
Geneva, whereas instruments concerning human security are developed in Vienna,
frequently with little discussion between the two bodies.13 Nonetheless, in the
positivist legal world, human rights law and criminal law do intersect in a number of
circumstances. The criminalization of particular conduct may be tested against a state
constitution, where national criminal laws are subject to constitutional protections
that include human rights. Some national legislatures conduct specific human rights
assessments of proposed criminal legislation. At the regional and international levels,
complaints to human rights tribunals can directly concern the compatibility of
national criminal law with the international human rights obligations of the state in
question.14 International human rights law includes an implicit duty to punish serious
human rights violations through prosecution.15 A detailed body of law has also arisen
around criminal culpability for a limited subset of human rights as a component of
international criminal law. Nonetheless, when compared, for example, to the sheer
number and depth of judicial decisions on human rights and criminal procedure,
jurisprudence on human rights and criminalization is seen, at least at the regional and
international levels, to be decidedly limited. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that
few academic commentators have tackled the legal intersections of human rights and
criminalization head-on. Of those who do, some take extreme positions, such as the
suggestion that the violation of human rights of any kind should be a criminal act.16
More considered work examines a subset of the criminalization jurisprudence of cer-
tain international human rights systems, including the European and the United
Nations system.17 To date, however, the literature lacks detailed analysis of the out-
comes and reasoning of such international human rights law criminalization jurispru-
dence that does exist.

13 Barrett, D., and Nowak, M., 2009.

14 See, for example, Prince v. South Africa, UNHRC, concerning the compatibility with the
ICCPR of the offence of possessing or using cannabis, and Kokkinakis v. Greece, ECHR, con-
cerning the compatibility with the ECHR of the offence of acts of proselytism.
15 Seibert-Fohr, A., 2009.
16 See, for example, Blau, J., and Moncada, A., 2007.
17 See, for example, Bengoetxea, J., and Jung, H., 1991; Ashworth, A., 2013; O’Flaherty, M.,
and Higgins, N., 2015; Du Hert, P. et al., 2007; Keehn, E.N., 2018.
6 Introduction
As a result, bringing the fields of criminal theory and international human
rights law together is no easy task. One key reason for this is the fact that inter-
national human rights law sits predominantly within the plane of positivist law
and ex post facto case law. International human rights law consists of treaties and
the decisions of international human rights courts and tribunals. Human rights
treaties are negotiated positivist text, and the decisions of human rights courts
and tribunals are highly context-specific. Where such decisions address the com-
patibility of a particular criminal offence with international human rights law,
they do so from the vantage point of looking back at the offence in law and its
application to the facts in practice. By contrast, criminal theory is most usually
conducted as a theoretical a priori exercise. That is, criminal theory is concerned
with an ideal, critical moral approach to what should or should not be
a criminal offence, ideally well before any offence is enacted.
In order to analyse whether international human rights law might have any
value for criminal theory, it is necessary to distil international human rights law
and jurisprudence down to the conceptual level. Fundamental international
human rights law principles and concepts can then be compared with the critical
moral reasoning of criminal theory. This requires scrutiny of the place of crimin-
alization within international human rights law treaty text, as well as detailed
examination of the underlying reasoning of the decisions of international human
rights courts and tribunals that address criminalization.
Such an undertaking relies, in particular, on the notion that law has a dual
nature. Under this approach, the law comprises both a real or factual dimension
and an ideal or critical one. The factual dimension is represented by the elem-
ents of authoritative issuance and social efficacy, whereas the ideal dimension
finds its expression in the element of moral correctness.18 As applied to inter-
national human rights law, dual nature of law theory highlights the connection
between human rights as both moral rights and positive rights. In the field of
criminal law, as with other national laws, dual nature of law theory, under the
Radbruch formula, suggests a threshold of extreme injustice for determining the
outermost border of law, beyond which laws are, in some sense, valid but
defective.19 Kai Ambos expresses this as the idea that the positive law ultimately
operates with a “legitimacy reservation” that also requires a plausible claim of
moral validity.20
At the international level, this theoretical approach fits well with the concep-
tion of the rule of law. The United Nations definition of the rule of law includes
the requirement that laws must be consistent with international human rights
norms and standards, fairness, legal certainty, and the avoidance of
arbitrariness.21 Under this approach, law is supreme (in the classically positivist

18 Alexy, R., 2010.

19 Radbruch, G., 1946.
20 Ambos, K., 2013, p.302.
21 United Nations, Security Council, 2004. UN Doc. S/2004/616, para 6.
 Introduction 7
sense) but – or perhaps and – only fully legitimate when it fulfils the substantive
requirements of fairness and meets human rights norms and standards. The
human rights compatibility requirement in the United Nations rule of law
definition plays a role analogous to that of the extreme injustice test. As such,
justice is conceived as an ideal of accountability and fairness in the protection
and vindication of rights and the prevention and punishment of wrongs. Justice
implies regard for the rights of the accused, for the interests of victims, and for
the well-being of society at large.
An appeal to dual nature of law theory places emphasis on the fact that whilst
international human rights law derives, in positivist terms, from international
negotiations and judicial interpretation, it is, at the same time, a product of
a historical tradition that owes a great deal to intellectual and philosophical con-
cepts such as natural law, natural rights, autonomy of the person, and human
dignity.22 As expressed by James Griffin:

The international law of human rights aims, or should aim, at least in part,
to incorporate some extra-legal ethical standards. The creators of inter-
national law do not, and cannot plausibly say that what they deem to be
a human right is a human right, that on this subject they are infallible … It
is not that over the last fifty years or so the body of treaties and decisions of
international courts has grown large enough for those courts now to be
able to tell us definitively whether a certain human right exists and what,
fairly precisely, its content is. [Rather] … an international court willing to
heed expert opinion or considerations of humanity or jus cogens is driven to
take seriously basic considerations of justice, the meaning of “the dignity of
the person”, and how justice and rights are related.23

It is this approach which facilitates the bringing together of the fields of inter-
national human rights law and criminal theory. International human rights juris-
prudence does not and cannot examine all acts that may be subject to criminal
prohibition. Within some international human rights systems, however, there is
now sufficient, consistent case law to undertake analysis of underlying human
rights concepts and reasoning that are applied to questions of criminalization.
That said, the notion that ideal concepts may underpin international human
rights law is one thing to assert, but quite another to identify in practice.

22 Perhaps most clearly argued is the proposition that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
has solid roots in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
(26 August 1789 and 24 June 1793) through the natural law concept that the individual has
rights against the state, through the rule of law requirement that legal rules actually dictate
behaviour of all within the state’s jurisdiction, and through the social contract that orders soci-
ety for the common good. See Marks, S.P., 1998, p.511.
23 Griffin, J., 2008, p.54 and 204–205. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through
PLSclear.
8 Introduction
Distilling a conceptual framework from the diverse, fact-driven jurisprudence
of an international human rights court or tribunal is far from straightforward.
Whilst international human rights judges at least aim for consistency of decisions
and reasoning, their decisions do not often consciously make reference to con-
ceptual moral frameworks. In addition to its contribution to criminal theory, this
book also therefore demonstrates an analytical approach to international human
rights law jurisprudence. By classifying and conducting a semi-quantitative analysis
of a group of international human rights judicial decisions on criminalization, it
demonstrates a technique for identification and analysis of underlying legal con-
cepts and reasoning. To the extent that a conceptual framework is identifiable, the
technique offers a route to bringing order and analytical rigour to an otherwise
largely unstructured body of case law. This enables new insights and understanding
of factors that guide a human rights-based position on criminalization. The differ-
ences between this framework and criminal theory are then used to discuss whether
international human rights law can either itself provide guiding principles for crim-
inalization or otherwise make a significant contribution to existing criminal theory.

Defining the criminal offence

Whilst some countries benefit from a single, largely definitive penal code,
criminalization in other countries can arise from multiple statutes that deal with
multiple subject matters and at multiple geographical levels, such as federal and
state. Criminal offences may also be contained in secondary legislation, at common
law, and from discretionary, or ta’azir, crimes in some Islamic legal systems.24 In
Western legal systems, the large spectrum of terminology associated with legal
measures of varying types, including words such as crime, offence, legal, indictable,
summary and administrative offence, felony, misdemeanour, administrative sanc-
tion, and penalty, in particular serves to introduce confusion as to those measures
that may be included within the ambit of criminalization. A number of commenta-
tors have recognized the significance of this challenge. Susan Klein, for instance,
suggests that it is simply impossible, at present, to separate all proceedings into
criminal and civil actions, as so many now have a combination of features from
both.25 Nevertheless, some definitions of crime do rely on a focus on the type of
proceedings as the determining factor of a crime in law. Under this approach,
a crime is defined by reference to the legal consequences of the act. As such, the
criminal offence is distinguished, primarily, not as a crime or civil wrong but by
virtue of the difference between criminal and civil proceedings. A crime then
becomes an act that is capable of being followed by criminal proceedings, having
one of the types of outcome known to follow these proceedings.26

24 For an introduction to Islamic law, see Bassiouni, M.C., and Badr, G.M., 2002.
25 Klein, S.R., 1999, p.722.
26 Williams, G., 1955, p.123.
 Introduction 9
Although such definitions on the one hand introduce at least some basis for
distinguishing a criminal offence, on the other they arguably simply defer the
problem of identification from the level of legal definitions to the level of type
of proceedings and sanctions. Further tests have nonetheless been proposed to
attach to this definition, including related to the type of procedural rules that
govern the legal proceedings, as well as to the distinguishing feature of the sanc-
tion. Andreas von Hirsch, in particular, advocates that it is the “censure” that
attaches to a criminal penalty which most clearly distinguishes criminal wrongs
from other wrongs.27 International human rights law itself is also able to make
a contribution to the point, with jurisprudence under the European Convention
on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 6 (Right to a fair trial), for example, provid-
ing some guidance as to whether a particular set of proceedings amounts to
criminal proceedings for the purposes of fair trial protection. In this respect,
European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law tends towards
a broadening of the criminal head to all sanctions whose main objective is to
deter from future violations of a norm generally perceived as inherently bad or
contrary to the common values shared in a democratic society.28 For the pur-
poses of analysing international human rights jurisprudence on criminalization,
and its comparison with criminal theory, however, the focus in this book is on
those proceedings that clearly carry the stigma and expressive function of
a criminal conviction, rather than coercive sanctions in general.29
A conscious exclusion is also made in relation to the general part of the
criminal law. Criminal law theorists often refer to the distinction between the
general part of the criminal law and the special part of the criminal law.30
The general part is comprised of rules and principles of the criminal law
whose importance and application can be analysed and debated without
necessarily referring to a specific crime. By contrast, the special part of the
criminal law refers to the particular conduct, situations, and states of mind
that are used to define specific offences, such as murder, theft, rape, robbery,
and blackmail. Doctrines sometimes argued to reside in the general part of
the criminal law, and thus to apply across a range of offences, include the
requirement of voluntary action; the principle of causation and interventions
between conduct and result; the requirement of a culpable state mind; the
operation of defences such as self-defence and duress; and principles related
to inchoate offences and accessory liability.
Analysis of the general part of the criminal law is to be found in the European
continental perspective, including, in particular Austrian, German, Italian, Portu-
guese, Spanish, and Swiss legal thinking, in both a classical and, more recently,

27 Von Hirsch, A., 1993, pp.9–12.

28 See, for example, the ECHR cases of Engel and Others v. The Netherlands; Garyfallou Aebe
v. Greece; and Jussila v. Finland. For a general review, see Guinchard, A., 2005.
29 On the expressive function of law in general, see Sunstein, C.R., 1996.
30 Gardner, J., 1998.
10 Introduction
post-finalist, structure of the criminal law. Under a post-finalist structure, a crime is
considered to consist of the objective and subjective elements of the offence (Tat-
bestandsmäβigkeit) together with a requirement for wrongfulness (Rechtswidrigkeit)
and culpability (Schuld) in a normative sense.31 Such models suggest that the inter-
action between the general part and the special part of the criminal law is complex.
In particular, depending upon the model applied, mental aspects, such as specific
intentions or motives, beliefs concerning the act and situation, and consciousness of
the wrong, can be distributed between the special and general parts of the criminal
law. As Simester and Shute note, the general part of the criminal law is not simply
the set of generalized, directly justiciable doctrines known to criminal law. General
part doctrines need not be mandatory, they may be advisory or, for that matter,
permissive. Nor is the relationship between the general and special parts uniform or
straightforward.32
There is no reason, in principle, why a human rights analysis of the general
part of the criminal law may not be undertaken. David Richards, for example,
examines defences of justification and excuse, as well as other elements of the
general part of the criminal law, with reference to a rights-based scheme of
autonomous choice and deliberation.33 The ECtHR, in the context of chal-
lenges to criminal convictions, has had occasion to consider the human rights
compatibility of strict liability offences.34 The close interaction between the
general part and special part of the criminal law means that it can sometimes be
difficult to focus on one part to the exclusion of the other. A human rights
analysis of the specific offence of rape, for instance, engages not only issues that
are particular to the definition of the specific act but also issues that can be
described as belonging to the general part of the criminal law, including
the ability of the victim to consent to the act or not, the subjective belief of the
perpetrator, as well as strict liability variants of the offence.35
That said, the focus of this book is on an analysis of the special part of the
criminal law – that is, the range of acts or conduct which may legitimately be
made criminal. The rationale for this lies in the particular public, and practical,
interest in specific controversial laws, such as the criminalization of homelessness
or membership of proscribed organizations. Indeed, international human rights
law jurisprudence most usually arises from challenges to specific criminalization
and criminal convictions. Similarly, whilst criminal law theorists do not ignore
the general part of criminal law, they usually reserve the greater part of their
analysis for the acceptability, or not, of specific conduct.

31 Ambos, K., 2007.

32 Simester, A.P., and Shute, S., 2002, p.12.
33 Richards, D.A.J., 1979b, p.1431.
34 See, for example, Salabiaku v. France, ECHR, and Hansen v. Denmark, ECHR.
35 See, for example, X and Y v. The Netherlands, ECHR, and G v. United Kingdom, ECHR.
 Introduction 11
The scope of international human rights law
At its core, international human rights law consists of international customary
law and those international treaties that contain human rights and fundamental
freedoms concluded under the auspices of the United Nations and regional
intergovernmental systems. Whereas the Universal Declaration on Human Rights
(UDHR) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948
is considered as a foundational international human rights law document, its
status as a General Assembly resolution means that it does not, on the face of it,
impose binding obligations on states. That said, a number of the provisions of the
UDHR arguably do reflect provisions of customary international law. These may
include the right to life (UDHR Article 3), as well as prohibitions against slavery
(Article 4), torture (Article 5), arbitrary detention (Article 9), and racial discrim-
ination (Article 2).36 By far the greater body of international human rights legal
standards, though, are found in specific international human rights treaties.
Almost exactly 18 years after the UDHR, the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR) was adopted by General Assembly resolution 2200A
(XXI) on 16 December 1966, containing 22 articles setting out civil and political
rights for the individual. The Covenant additionally set out two rights of peoples.
The same General Assembly resolution also adopted the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), containing 10 substantive articles
with rights of an economic, social, and cultural nature. The 1966 Covenants are
accompanied by a further seven core international human rights treaties negotiated
under the auspices of the United Nations: the International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965 (ICERD), the Conven-
tion on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women of 1979
(CEDAW), the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrad-
ing Treatment or Punishment of 1984 (CAT), the Convention on the Rights of
the Child of 1989 (CRC), the International Convention on the Protection of the
Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families of 1990 (ICMW),
the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Dis-
appearance of 2006 (CPED), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities, also of 2006 (CRPD). In addition, Optional Protocols exist to
ICESCR, ICCPR, CEDAW, CRC, CAT, and CRPD, creating competencies for
communications from individuals claiming to be victims of violations of rights
contained in the instruments and covering additional areas such as the abolition of
the death penalty, the involvement of children in armed conflict, and the sale of
children, child prostitution, and child pornography.
At the regional intergovernmental level, contemporaneously with the preparation
of the UDHR, a charter of human rights was proposed in Europe by the Congress
of Europe held in The Hague in May 1948. A first draft of what was to become the
ECHR was prepared by a committee of the European Movement in 1949. The

36 Hannum, H., 1996.

12 Introduction
resultant Convention was opened for signature on 4 November 1950 in Rome,
and the ECHR came into effect on 3 September 1953 upon its tenth ratification.
The ECHR has been amended and supplemented by a number of additional
protocols, which both added additional rights to the original Convention and
amended provisions relating to the institutional machinery of the ECHR.
In the Americas, the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man
represents the earliest contemporary human rights instrument, having
been adopted by the Ninth International Conference of American States, held
in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1948. This was followed by the adoption of the Ameri-
can Convention on Human Rights in 1969. Whereas the American Declaration
of the Rights and Duties of Man does not hold the status of a treaty, the
General Assembly of the Organization of American States has repeatedly recog-
nized that the American Declaration is a source of international obligations for
member states of the Organization. In addition, the Inter-American Commis-
sion on Human Rights is empowered to consider allegations of violation of
rights guaranteed in the American Declaration.
In Africa, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights was unanimously
approved by the Organization of African Unity in 1981. A Protocol to the African
Charter on the Establishment of an African Court on Human Peoples’ Rights was
adopted in 1998 and entered into force in 2004. At present, there is no Asia-
wide or Oceania-wide intergovernmental human rights system. The Association
of Southeast Asian Nations adopted the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration in
2012, however, and the League of Arab States adopted the Arab Charter on
Human Rights in 2004. The relationship between the universal international
human rights law system of the United Nations and the international human
rights law deriving from regional intergovernmental systems is, in many senses,
bidirectional. Regional human rights systems may both reflect and influence
United Nations human rights instruments. Whilst it is undoubtedly the case, for
example, that the European human rights system became influential in its region
earlier, the American and African systems have also contributed to the making
of the broader international human rights order.37
In addition to the provisions of international human rights instruments and
treaties themselves, international human rights law is shaped by the jurispru-
dence of international human rights courts and tribunals. It is the international
common law, representing the collective decisions of international tribunals,
which provides the soft law interpretative standards that delineate the meaning
and application of treaty-based rights.38 Judgments of international courts and
tribunals, such as the ECtHR, do not strictly bind non-parties to the particular
case. However, as noted by the European Court in Pretty, judgments issued in
individual cases establish precedents, albeit to a greater or lesser extent, and

37 See, for example, Huneeus, A., and Madsen, M.R., 2018.

38 Guzman, A.T., and Meyer, T.L., 2010.
 Introduction 13
a decision in a case could not, in either theory or practice, be framed in such
a way as to prevent application in later cases.39
Within the United Nations system, treaty bodies are responsible for monitoring
implementation of the United Nations international human rights treaties. They
produce concluding observations on state party reports and may also receive and
consider individual complaints. United Nations treaty body concluding observa-
tions differ from judgments of an international court or tribunal in that they are
not legally binding on states parties and are developed following a periodic process
of state party reporting and dialogue with the relevant treaty-monitoring Commit-
tee. Committee decisions in individual cases similarly contain non-legally binding
recommendations to the state party. Nonetheless, concluding observations and
decisions in individual communications are not without some special status, at least
to the extent that they interpret the treaty or consider the treaty obligations of the
state party.40 The combined jurisprudence of an international human rights
tribunal or treaty body on a particular issue can therefore be taken as an authorita-
tive expression of the applicable international human rights standards within each
international human rights system. Moreover, a certain cross-fertilization can occur
between the jurisprudence of different international human rights systems. The
African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, for instance, frequently makes
reference to the interpretation of equivalent standards within the United Nations,
European, and American human rights systems.41
For the purposes of this book, the human rights contained in the nine core United
Nations human rights treaties and their protocols, as well as the treaties of the three
principal regional human rights mechanisms, together with the authoritative inter-
pretation of their associated international courts and tribunals, are taken as the princi-
pal expression of international human rights law to be applied to the question of
criminalization. This is not to say that other international law does not exist that may
be classified as human rights law. Multilateral treaties agreed under the auspices of
organizations such as the International Labour Organization and the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, including the 1960 Convention
against Discrimination in Education, the 1948 Freedom of Association and Protec-
tion of the Right to Organize Convention, and the 1999 Worst Forms of Child
Labour Convention, for example, also contain human rights protections. Such instru-
ments generally either build on standards in the core United Nations human rights
treaties or concern their application in particular circumstances or to specific groups.
This said, the question of what exactly comes within the remit of international
human rights law is more than a semantic issue, not least because human rights
treaties are often argued to have a special status within international law.42 The

39 Pretty v. United Kingdom, ECHR.

40 O’Flaherty, M., 2006.
41 See, for example, Lohé Issa Konaté v. Burkina Faso, African Court on Human and Peoples’
Rights, paras 116–166.
42 Mégret, F., 2018.
14 Introduction
category of human rights treaties may be larger or smaller depending upon the
specific characteristics employed to define the category. These may include rights
of petition for individuals, as well as independence of rights from nationality, or
reciprocal protection by other states parties to the treaty.43 Of special relevance to
the issue of criminalization is the interface between instruments that contain pro-
tections of individual rights and those that prohibit specific acts under threat of
penal sanction. International treaties such as the 1926 Slavery Convention and
the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Geno-
cide, for example, are often viewed as human rights treaties, but do not in fact
specify rights of individuals. Rather, they define specific acts and commit states
parties to undertake necessary measures to ensure that penalties are imposed in
respect of infractions.44 Whilst their structure is very different to that of the nine
core United Nations human rights treaties, their characterization as human rights
instruments can probably be traced to the fact that their subject matter strikes at
the heart of human life and liberty.
Equally significant is the relationship between international human rights
law, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law. Whereas
international human rights law is primarily constructed in terms of state obliga-
tions, international criminal law is concerned with the criminal liability of indi-
viduals. This applies to the most serious crimes of concern to the international
community as a whole, including the crime of genocide, war crimes, and the
crime of aggression, but also, under the head of crimes against humanity,
a number of acts that represent serious human rights violations, such as
enslavement, deprivation of physical liberty, enforced disappearance, and
torture.45 The existence of a continuum between the core international human
rights treaties and international instruments that provide for individual criminal
liability confirms that the most serious human rights violations are to be sub-
ject to criminal sanctions. Indeed, in the 1980s, M. Cherif Bassiouni had
already proposed a process of evolutionary development of human rights
through enunciative, declarative, prescriptive, enforcement, and, finally, “crimin-
alization” stages.46 As Bassiouni recognized, however, not all rights will progress
through these stages. As such, the focus of this book is not on the well-established
criminalization of the most serious human rights violations, such as slavery, geno-
cide, and crimes against humanity. Rather, by examining the range of rights and
obligations prescribed by international human rights law across its universal and
regional systems as a whole, it aims to understand how international human rights
law views criminalization in all its aspects – in particular, where criminal law is to
be required, tolerated, or constrained.

43 Craven, M., 2000.

44 See Slavery Convention, Article 6, and Genocide Convention, Article 5.
45 See United Nations, 1998. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
46 Bassiouni, M.C., 1982.
2 An international human rights law
approach

In promulgating national criminal law, the state, at least in cases of common or con-
ventional crime with identifiable victims, can be considered to reach into and assume
competence over a specific set of disputes between individuals. What is, in fact, often
a horizontal matter between legal or natural persons, such as when one individual
causes physical harm to another, becomes in law a vertical matter between the state
and the individual, as the state assumes competence to adjudicate and to sanction the
perpetrator. Not all crime types, however, involve such a transformation. Criminal
avoidance of state taxes, for example, may already be considered a vertical dispute
between the individual and the state. Other crime types may fall somewhere in-
between. Whilst a criminal offence of dangerous driving, for instance, often involves
specific actual or potential victims, it could also be committed in the complete absence
of nearby motorists. A criminal charge in this latter case may be considered partly of
a horizontal dispute nature (in so far as a non-defined group of persons is placed at
tangible risk of harm) and partly of a vertical dispute nature (in so far as society,
represented by state government, is endangered in general). From a theoretical jural
relations perspective, the vertical exercise of the criminal law by the state over an indi-
vidual can be characterized under Hohfeld’s scheme of fundamental legal concepts as
a “power-liability” relationship. In other words, the state has “dominant volitional
control,” or the legal power, to effect a particular change of jural relations. In the case
of criminalization: to forbid, or require, an individual to act in a particular way under
threat of criminal sanctions. The individual’s “liability” represents his or her suscepti-
bility to the exercise of this power.1
In terms of its application to horizontal and vertical disputes, international
law is not dissimilar. At the level of its subjects, primarily states, it assumes
competence both over horizontal inter-subject, that is, interstate, disputes, and
over state conduct that constitutes a vertical breach of international community
obligations in general.2 In determining whether state conduct falls short of such

1 Hohfeld proposed that fundamental juridical relations could be characterized by four sets of
relations: right–duty; liberty–no-right; power–liability; and immunity–disability. Hohfeld, W.,
1913, 1917.
2 Cassese, A., 2005, pp.270–272.
16 An international human rights law approach
standards, international law, and particularly international human rights law, is also
sometimes required to reach in to the national level, in order to examine actions
attributable to state authorities that affect individuals.3 International human rights
law specifically envisages this piercing of the veil of sovereignty, including by pur-
porting to allow individuals, and sometimes groups of individuals, to benefit from
certain rights-based protections that it asks states to protect. Breaches of such state
obligations are not generally considered to constitute state crimes, although they
may entail legal consequences for international wrongful acts of a state.4
Where the state action under scrutiny is the promulgation or application of
national criminal law, the application of international human rights law thus
involves the “superimposition” of one system – that of international law – on that
of another – the national criminal law. This process raises many questions,
however, concerning the exact interaction between the two legal plains. Does
international human rights law impose limits on national criminalization, for
instance, by virtue of the fact that the individual has an international law right not
to be criminalized for certain conduct? Or is it rather because the state has an
obligation not to prohibit particular acts?5 Alternatively, does international
human rights law bestow individual international rights not to be criminally
harmed by others? Or even duties not to harm others? And, if so, is it these exact
rights and duties that must be enforced by the state through criminal law? The
possibilities are diverse and, to some extent, overlapping. Serious engagement
with such questions is, however, important. The precise way in which inter-
national human rights law is understood affects the way in which questions about
its application to criminalization are framed and, in turn, the answers received.

Subjects and violations

An oft-cited feature of international law is that the fundamental or primary subjects
of international law are not, traditionally, individuals but states.6 As characterized by
Antonio Cassese, it is the state that possesses full legal capacity in the international
sphere, and hence the ability to be vested with rights, powers, and obligations.7
From the Hohfeldian perspective, international law, and thus international human
rights law, contains a mix of right–duty, privilege–no-right, and power–liability cor-
relatives that operate between states, depending upon the nature of terms agreed
within bilateral and multilateral treaties, as well as the accepted rules of customary
international law. At the national level, states give effect to their international com-
mitments either through automatic standing incorporation of international rules into

3 See, for example, United Nations, Human Rights Committee, 2004a. UN Doc. CCPR/C/
21/Rev.1/Add.13, para 10–16.
4 Cassese, A., 2005, p.269 and 241.
5 See, for example, Baker, D.J., 2011.
6 Oppenheim, L., 1905, p.19.
7 Cassese, A., 2005, p.71.
 An international human rights law approach 17
national law (often associated with monist systems) or by legislative incorporation (in
dualist systems), whereby international rules become applicable within the state legal
system only if and when the relevant parliamentary authorities pass specific imple-
menting legislation.8 Whilst this is the clear traditional position, Cassese also
concedes that, in the 20th century, and increasingly after the Second World War,
other poles of interest and activity, including national liberation movements and indi-
viduals, have gained a limited international status in some circumstances.9
When it comes to the particular position of individuals under international
human rights law, it is though neither simple nor straightforward to argue that
international human rights law with its heavy employment of the treaty form cre-
ates legal rights and obligations for individuals.10 Indeed, under the traditional
view, individuals would not acquire independent international legal rights under
human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR) or International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (ICESCR) at all. Rather, individuals would be solely dependent upon the
recognition of claims by the contracting state through its domestic legal system.11
Critics of this view, on the other hand, point to international complaints mechan-
isms associated with a number of forms of international human rights law that
may be accessed by individuals, including, not least, the possibility of individual
complaint to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and Inter-
American Commission on Human Rights (IACommHR).12 They also highlight
the fact that the language of some instruments appears to feasibly ascribe rights
directly to individuals. The ICCPR, the European Convention on Human Rights
(ECHR), and the American Convention on Human Rights, for instance, use for-
mulations such as “every human being has …,” “everyone has …,” “everyone
shall …,” and “no one shall …,” suggesting some direct attribution of individual
rights (and duties) by international law.13 The traditionalist, though, is able to
respond that, by contrast, instruments such as the International Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punish-
ment (CAT) do not use the language of individual rights. Rather, they express
rights through the concomitant obligations of states parties, using language such
as “states parties shall …” and “each state party shall ….”14 Neither side wins con-
clusively through a linguistic argument alone, and it is likely that the difference is
more cosmetic than substantive.15

8 Ibid., pp.220–221.
9 Ibid., pp.71–72.
10 Addo, M.K., 2010, p.193.
11 United Nations, Human Rights Committee, 2004a. UN Doc. CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/
Add.13.
12 Addo, M.K., 2010, pp.193–196.
13 See, for example, ICCPR, Articles 9 and 17, and ECHR Articles 5, 8, 9, 10, and 11.
14 See, for example, ICERD, Articles 2(2), 4, and 6, and CAT Articles 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9 to 16.
15 Orakhelashvili, A., 2001, p.268.
18 An international human rights law approach
National law interpretations of international law also show divergence. Some lines
of authority from the US courts suggest that binding international (in this case, cus-
tomary) human rights law can confer rights on individuals.16 By contrast, in the
United Kingdom, the courts have consistently held that international law alone
cannot directly represent a source of individual rights and obligations enforceable in
the national courts.17 It should be carefully noted at this stage that, whilst closely
related, the question of whether the individual enjoys international rights under inter-
national law remains strictly separate from the question of remedies and from the
modality of implementation of international law at the national level. The existence
of one or more states with national legal systems that recognize an individual right
derived from international law may be evidence of a piece of international law that
directly confers rights on individuals. It does not, however, prove the existence of an
international individual legal right, in the sense that the individual may be considered
a subject of international law. The modality of implementation sits firmly within the
discretion of each state and its own national law. By contrast, the position of individ-
uals under international law is itself a separable point of international law.
Whilst the point may appear academic, it is pivotal to a consistent analysis of
the relationship between international human rights law and criminalization as
exercised through national law. The most appropriate approach to applying inter-
national human rights law to matters of national criminal law is one based on the
perspective of state obligations, rather than individual rights. This approach has
the result that from the international legal perspective, it makes more sense to
speak, sensu stricto, of the international human rights law obligations of a state
not to prohibit a certain conduct by means of the national criminal law than it
does to invoke a putative international right of the individual not to be criminal-
ized for a particular act. Equivalently, international human rights law provisions
that require states parties to ensure that specific acts are offences in national crim-
inal law are best characterized as state obligations, rather than as international
individual rights to enjoy criminal protection from a specific act.
This said, there are myriad circumstances where the individual is able to prac-
tically exercise his or her human rights, in the sense of initiating a valid legal
challenge to his or her non-enjoyment of them, either because the state offers
a mechanism of national legal recourse or because the individual has access to
an international complaints mechanism. As such, the legal contours of the state
obligation are driven, not least, by the rights-based claims of individuals, wher-
ever these are successful in reaching national or international tribunals. Such
challenges require the national court or international mechanism to assess
whether the facts of the particular situation reveal a violation of the human
right. In line with the focus on state obligations, the majority of this assessment
is carried out, not solely with respect to the impact on the individual victim or
others but also with respect to the extent of the obligation of the state. Thus,

16 Kedian, M.K., 1999.

17 Higgins, R., 1992, p.1272.
 An international human rights law approach 19
the well-known approach of the ECtHR begins with the identification of a prima
facie interference of a right of an individual but quickly introduces the state per-
spective. The initial complaint concerns the facts such as they apply to individuals –
whether the retired businessman of Greek nationality arrested more than 60 times
for proselytism or the young Jehovah’s Witness prosecuted for evading compul-
sory military service.18 However, whether an interference with a right amounts to
a violation is determined not only with reference to the specific situation of the
applicant but also with respect to the particular actions, or inactions, of the state
itself in a wider context. For rights that may be legitimately subject to limitations,
this involves ascertaining whether the state exercised its discretion, within
a certain margin of appreciation accorded to it, reasonably, carefully, and in good
faith, and whether in light of the case as a whole, the reasons adduced by national
authorities are relevant and sufficient to justify a restriction that meets a legitimate
aim and is proportionate to a pressing social need, upon an acceptable assessment
of the relevant facts.19 The legitimate range of choices of the respondent state in
this respect is narrowed or widened, not with reference to the situation of the
complainant but, at least in ECtHR jurisprudence, by considering the views of
other Council of Europe member states in the form of a common European con-
sensus test. Thus, in the case of the Jehovah’s Witness prosecuted for evading
compulsory military service, the ECtHR, in determining that such a criminal
offence could not correspond to a pressing social need, placed particular weight
on the fact that almost all member states which ever had, or still have, compulsory
military service had introduced alternatives to service, in order to reconcile the
possible conflict between individual conscience and military obligations.20 In
a very real sense, the right of the individual – in particular, the contours of its
content and its violability – is described not solely by the effect on the individual
himself or herself but by the nature and extent of the corresponding state obliga-
tion. An individual may be go hungry, yet there be no violation of the right to
food. An individual may be killed, yet there be no violation of the right to life.
As such, whilst there is, in many ways, a strong link between the individual as
a rights-holder and the state as a duty-bearer in the correlative Hohfeldian sense
of legal relations, at the same time, it is clear that the relationship between the
state and individual in international human rights law is more complex.21 Whereas
Hohfeld imagines a perfect reciprocal relationship between rights and duties in
a “claim right” sense, as noted by Michael Addo, the effect of permissible limita-
tions on rights contained within international human rights treaties exposes these
rights to uncertainties that can inflex rights into privileges and liberties.22 From

18 Kokkinakis v. Greece, ECHR, and Bayatyan v. Armenia, ECHR.

19 See, for example, Mamère v. France, ECHR, and Lindon, Otchakovsky-Laurens and July
v. France, ECHR.
20 Bayatyan v. Armenia, ECHR, para 123.
21 Hohfeld, W., 1913, 1917.
22 Addo, M.K., 1997, p.11.
20 An international human rights law approach
a legal relations theory perspective, this means that international human rights law
contains elements of a number of different juridical relationships. As a result, at the
very least, the right–duty relationship of international human rights law as between
individual and state must be understood with reference to asymmetrical factors that
affect one of the correlatives by acting on the other. Under international human
rights law, for instance, an individual cannot understand the nature of his or her
“right” to freedom of expression without reference to all of the circumstances in
which the state may curb its duty to respect the right, including having regard to
the extent to which other states curb their own duties in equivalent circumstances.
This state of affairs is recognized in conceptual-legal discussions of the nature
of rights and obligations at the international level. Arjun Sengupta, then inde-
pendent expert on the right to development, for example, speaks of rights that
become “norms” of behaviour or action of the agents, such as other individuals,
the state, or the international community, who can contribute to the fulfilment
of those rights.23 In other words, the right is assessed with reference to the
actions of the state as duty holder. Importantly, the state norms of behaviour
entail both negative and positive obligations – that is, not only obligations not
to interfere in the exercise of rights but also obligations to take the necessary
measures to safeguard a right. Violation of international human rights law
occurs in the first case from preventing or limiting the exercise of the right
through positive action, and in the second case, from inaction or passivity on
the part of the state. A common formulation within the United Nations human
rights system, in particular as regards economic, social, and cultural rights, that
reflects this position is that the state has obligations to respect, protect, and
fulfil human rights.24

Applying international human rights law to criminalization

When it comes to the question of criminalization, a focus of international human
rights law on the obligations of the state entails the principle of respect for the sover-
eignty of states to do as they choose within their sovereign bounds.25 This includes in
matters of national criminal law. As such, states may, in principle, promulgate any
criminal law they so wish, unless such action is incompatible with a specific state obli-
gation under international law. Where this obligation is one of international human
rights law, the restriction can be described as a Sengupta norm of behaviour, repre-
senting the counterpart to the specific right of the individual listed in the international
human rights instrument. The norm may require a state not to criminalize certain
conduct, where, for example, criminalization falls outside of the state’s legitimate
range of action, as defined by the margin of appreciation. The norm may be

23 United Nations, General Assembly, 2000. UN Doc. A/55/306, para 8.

24 International Commission of Jurists, 1997.
25 See United Nations, General Assembly, 1981. UN Doc. A/RES/20/2131. See also United
Kingdom v. Albania, ICJ, and Nicaragua v. United States, ICJ.
 An international human rights law approach 21
ambivalent towards criminalization, such as where both criminalization and non-
criminalization are within the margin of appreciation. The norm may even require
criminalization, where the use of criminal law to prohibit certain conduct is required
by positive obligations under international human rights law. In other words, national
criminal laws may be required, tolerated, or constrained by the international human
rights law obligations of the state. This dual, or even triple, interaction of human
rights with criminal law has been described as the shield and sword function of
human rights.26 As noted by Françoise Tulkens, human rights have both a defensive
and an offensive role, a role of both neutralizing and triggering the criminal law.27
With respect to a particular criminalization question, the compatibility of the exist-
ence, or absence, of a particular criminal law with international human rights law
must therefore be assessed on a right-by-right basis, taking into account the contours
and nature of the (positive and negative) state obligations under each separate
human right contained in applicable international law. In effect, the international
human rights tribunal must start from a neutral position on the criminalization
question, until it can be demonstrated that a particular right requires or prohibits
criminalization.28 In other words, for each possible act – be it rape, assisting suicide,
blasphemy, or defamation – the criminalization, or lack of criminalization, must be
tested separately against state obligations under relevant rights that may be engaged –
non-exhaustively, for instance, the right to life, the right not to be subjected to
torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the right to liberty
and security, the right to respect for private and family life, and rights to freedom of
thought, conscience, religion, and expression. As a result, criminal laws may thus at
the same time infringe certain rights but not others.29 This is not inconsistent. It is,
rather, a logical result of the discrete structure of international human rights
law, comprising, as it does, collections of individual rights and correlative state obliga-
tions, largely in treaty form.
Theoretically, a particular criminalization issue could be assessed in abstracto
against a range of rights and corresponding state obligations. In practice, however,
this process occurs when the particular rights-based claim of an individual, or group
of individuals, is successful in reaching a national or international tribunal. Thus,
the human right compatibility assessment is most usually conducted in concreto,
with reference to not only the particular national criminal law, or absence of law,
but also the facts to which the law, or its absence, is applied. In some cases, an
applicant may directly or indirectly allege that the national criminal law itself is
incompatible with international law.30 In other cases, the challenge may relate

26 Tulkens, F., 2011, p.577. Tulkens notes that this phrase is commonly attributed to Christine
Van den Wyngaert.
27 Ibid., p.579.
28 See United Nations, Commission on Narcotic Drugs and Commission on Crime Prevention and
Criminal Justice, 2010. UN Doc. E/CN.7/2010/CRP.6 – E/CN.15/2010/CRP.1, para 14.
29 Ibid., para 19.
30 See, for example, S.A.S. v. France, ECHR; Friend, the Countryside Alliance and Others
v. United Kingdom, ECHR; and Norris v. Ireland, ECHR.
22 An international human rights law approach
solely or primarily to the way in which the law has been applied.31 In either case,
international human rights courts and tribunals tend to prefer to conduct their ana-
lysis within the confines of the facts at hand. The ECtHR, for example, has recalled
on a number of occasions that its jurisdiction is confined to examining the applica-
tion of a national law in a specific case and that it cannot consider in the abstract
the compatibility of such law with the Convention.32 The United Nations Human
Rights Committee has also noted that it is not called upon to criticize in the
abstract laws enacted by states parties.33
The in concreto approach creates a particularly diverse international human rights
jurisprudence on criminalization. A challenge to a specific criminal conviction, or
the lack of one, often necessitates some consideration of the underlying criminal
law in human rights terms. Yet human rights tribunals do not always speak directly
to the human rights compatibility of the law itself. In some cases, it can be assumed
that the criminal law is legitimate with respect to international human rights law,
insofar as the tribunal does not find an impugned conviction to violate any right.34
In other cases, the finding of a violation may be with reference only to the particu-
lar facts of the impugned conviction, and not to the underlying criminal law itself –
with the result that nothing can be said about the human rights compatibility of
the criminalization per se. This said, there are instances where international human
rights tribunals have conducted analysis verging on the abstract consideration of
the criminal law in isolation. In the European Court case of A, B and C v. Ireland,
for example, the Court was called upon to consider an Article 8 challenge brought
by three women who had travelled abroad for an abortion due to prohibitions on
abortion for health and well-being reasons in Ireland. Whilst the Court recounted
the specific circumstances of each of the three women, it used the opportunity to
consider more broadly the proportionality of the abortion prohibitions with respect
to the right to private life and rights invoked on behalf of the unborn.35
Even further in the direction of in abstracto analysis, in both Modinos v. Cyprus
and Norris v. Ireland, the European Court was asked to consider the compatibility of
criminal laws on homosexual relations in private between consenting male adults
with the Convention, in the absence of any enforcement action against the complain-
ants and no real prospect of the law actually being applied. The Court held, in
Norris, that the Convention entitles individuals to contend that a law violates their
rights by itself, in the absence of an individual measure of implementation, if they
“run the risk” of being directly affected by it. The Court went on to conclude that

31 See, for example, Osman v. United Kingdom, ECHR; Beganović v Croatia, ECHR; and M.
C. v. Bulgaria, ECHR.
32 See Acmanne and others v. Belgium, ECHR. See also Salabiaku v. France, ECHR, and Win-
grove v. United Kingdom, ECHR.
33 United Nations, Human Rights Committee, 1996. UN Doc. CCPR/C/58/D/550/1993,
para 9.3.
34 See, for example, Müller and others v. Switzerland, ECHR; Perrin v. United Kingdom,
ECHR; and Gough v. United Kingdom, ECHR.
35 A, B and C v. Ireland, ECHR, para 222–242.
 An international human rights law approach 23
a law which remains on the statute book, even though it is not enforced in
a particular class of cases for a considerable time, may be applied again in such cases
at any time, if, for example, there is a change of policy.36 Similarly, in Modinos, the
Court, noting that there was no guarantee that action will not be taken to enforce
the law, considered that the existence of the prohibition continuously and directly
affected the applicant’s private life.37 Whilst the logic of the Court is clear in such
cases, at the same time, the notion of a victim at risk of being directly affected by
a law represents a significant exception to the general principle against in abstracto
consideration of laws. In principle, therefore, at least wherever a criminal law applies
to an identifiable group of persons, it may be possible for the Court to engage in in
abstracto consideration of the law, absence a specific set of individual facts concerning
its application. Overall, in applying an international law approach to criminalization,
the position of international human rights law must be constructed from specific
treaty provisions and the interpretive case law of international human rights courts
and tribunals. Such case law is driven primarily by the facts at hand, but sometimes
leads courts and tribunals to engage in broader and more theoretical discussion.

A note on human rights and human duties

Its name notwithstanding, individual duties are not unknown to international
human rights law. With the notion of human duties gaining little traction in recent
years, there is a tendency to overlook the importance placed on duties within the
drafting of contemporary international human rights law treaties. The earliest
modern instrument, the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man of
1948, for instance, contains a whole chapter on duties. It specifies duties such as
the duty of every person to aid, support, educate, and protect his minor children
(Article 30); the duty of every person to acquire at least an elementary education
(Article 31); the duty of every person to vote in the popular elections of the country
of which he is a national (Article 32); the duty of every able-bodied person to
render whatever civil and military service his country may require for its defence
and preservation (Article 34); and the duty of every person to pay the taxes estab-
lished by law for the support of public services (Article 36).
Similarly, in reviewing the first drafts of what was to become the Universal Declar-
ation of Human Rights (UDHR), it is clear that the nascent Human Rights Com-
mission gave serious consideration to the relationship between individual rights and
duties. Article 1, for example, of the draft outline of an International Bill of Rights
presented by the United Nations Division for Human Rights in June 1947 referred
to a duty of loyalty to the state and to the international society, and called upon
everyone to accept their just share of responsibility for the performance of social
duties and such common sacrifices as may contribute to the common good.38 The

36 Norris v. Ireland, ECHR, paras 31–33.

37 Modinos v. Cyprus, ECHR, para 24.
38 United Nations, Economic and Social Council, 1947b. UN Doc. E/CN.4/AC.1/3. Article 1.
24 An international human rights law approach
same draft also included a duty to perform socially useful work and a duty towards
society to present information and news in a fair and impartial manner.39 Approving
of the general sentiment of the notion of duties, members of the Human Rights
Commission noted that it was a question of establishing the rights of the human
being and at the same time demanding his acceptance of the corresponding
obligations.40 Other delegations observed that it was of no use seeking to define per-
sonal freedom entirely detached from the obligation of those individuals either to the
state or to voluntary organizations.41 The UDHR as finally promulgated created two
duties for individuals and one duty for society: the duty to act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood (Article 1); (unspecified) duties of the individual to the
community (Article 29); and the duty of society to protect the family (Article 16). By
the time the binding ICCPR and ICESCR were adopted by the General Assembly in
December 1966, however, only a weak reference to specific duties remained in the
fifth preambular paragraph common to both covenants.42
Theoretically, individual duties derived from international human rights law, such
as duties to the community, could be one approach via which international human
rights law may possibly intersect with national criminal law. Such a duty may require,
for instance, the state to enact criminal laws for enforcement of the individual obliga-
tion. Under the American Declaration, for example, it is not perhaps outside of the
bounds of reasonable analysis to imagine that a state may argue a justified criminal-
ization of failure to vote, to render military service, or to pay taxes, with reference to
the duties contained in Articles 32, 34, and 36 of the American Declaration.
Whilst the drafters of the UDHR, and of a limited number of other instru-
ments such as the American Declaration, grappled seriously with the issue of
human duties, the prevailing trend in international human rights law since has
seen a waxing and waning of interest in the issue. The first serious study of Art-
icle 29 of the UDHR was conducted in 1980 by Erica-Irene Daes, Special Rap-
porteur of the (then) United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of
Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.43 Twenty years later, the Sub-
Commission again appointed one of its members, Miguel Alfonso Martínez, to
undertake a study on the issue of human rights and human responsibilities.44 In
2003, Martínez presented a pre-draft declaration on human social responsibil-
ities to the Commission on Human Rights.45 Member state reactions to the

39 Ibid., Articles 6, 18, and 37.

40 United Nations, Economic and Social Council, 1947c. UN Doc. E/CN.4/AC.1/3/Add.1,
p.5.
41 Ibid., p.6.
42 ICCPR and ICESCR, common preambular para 5: “Realizing that the individual, having duties
to other individuals and to the community to which he belongs, is under a responsibility to strive
for the promotion and observance of the rights recognized in the present Covenant.”
43 Daes, E-I., 1990.
44 United Nations, Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights,
2000. UN Doc. E/CN.4/2001/2.
45 United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 2003. UN Doc. E/CN.4/2003/105.
 An international human rights law approach 25
pre-draft declaration were divided. On the one hand, governments proposed that
the pre-draft declaration could be seen as an extension and development of the fun-
damental international legal instruments in the field of human rights. On the other
hand, many countries expressed the view that the pre-draft declaration was contrary
to the principles on which the international human rights system is built. In particu-
lar, countries objected to the idea that a state could determine which, if any, rights
an individual can enjoy in return for the exercise of responsibilities, on the basis
that to do so would be fundamentally inconsistent with the basic concepts of
human rights, according to which human rights are universal and inalienable.46 Fol-
lowing this round of comments by states, a proposal of the United Nations Com-
mission on Human Rights to request Mr Martínez to prepare a new initial version
of the pre-draft declaration was rejected by the Economic and Social Council at its
38th meeting in July 2005, effectively putting an end to the initiative.47
The question of specific individual duties may no longer be one of particular rele-
vance to international human rights bodies, courts, and tribunals. Nonetheless, as
a general corollary of rights, duties can still be seen to play some role in an inter-
national human rights law approach to criminalization. In the context of limitations
on rights, for example, the exercise of rights such as the right to freedom of expres-
sion, according to the ICCPR, carries with it special duties and responsibilities.48
This (arguably, individual) duty is linked to the permissibility of state restrictions on
the right, not only for the protection of matters such as national security, public
order, and public health but also for respect of the rights or reputations of others.49
As noted by Erica-Irene Daes, one key duty of the individual under international
human rights law is thus to exercise ones’ rights to the extent that they do not
infringe on the rights and freedoms of others.50 This principle can be traced back to
some of the founding influences on contemporary international human rights law.
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789, for example, stated that

liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injuries no one else:

hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except
those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the
same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.51

As noted by the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, individuals may

be regarded as having a responsibility not to cause human rights violations
against other individuals.52 To some extent, of course, the problem is one of

46 United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 2005a. UN Doc. E/CN.4/2005/99, paras

3 and 26.
47 United Nations, General Assembly, 2005. UN Doc. A/60/3/Rev.1, p.83.
48 ICCPR, Article 19(3).
49 ICCPR, Article 19(3)(a) and (b).
50 Daes, E-I., 1990, p.10.
51 French National Constituent Assembly, 1789, Article 4.
52 United Nations, General Assembly, 2012. UN Doc. A/HRC/22/71, para 30.
26 An international human rights law approach
semantics – whether one speaks of the duty of an individual not to exercise his
or her rights such that they infringe the rights of others or the right of the
other not to have his or her own rights infringed.
Whichever way the point is expressed, the perspective of exercising rights in
a manner that does not infringe on the rights of others represents an important factor
taken into consideration by international human rights bodies in reaching decisions
on the acceptability of criminalization. Where the criminal law restricts, for example,
the right to freedom of expression of one individual, in order to protect the right to
private life of another, the human rights acceptability of that criminal law requires
consideration of the extent to which the law constrains the exercise of the right,
having regard to the nature and scope of both rights. For the human rights court or
tribunal, this balance will involve a range of factors, including the seriousness of the
infringement of the right of the other individual. If the court or tribunal finds the
criminal law to be acceptable from a human rights perspective, in a very real sense,
this aligns with enforcement of a duty to exercise the right to freedom of expression
in a restrained and considerate manner.

Summary
International human rights law, and its application to criminalization, is considered as
best viewed from the perspective of state obligations, in line with the position of
states as the primary subjects of international law. Whilst individual claims before
international human rights courts and tribunals represent the starting point for (usu-
ally) in concreto consideration of human rights violations, the subsequent analysis is
often state-centric and driven by the contours of state obligations. Especially in the
European human rights system, state obligations are delineated also with reference to
the practice of other states. As complaints to human rights tribunals often concern
the application of criminal law, human rights jurisprudence on criminalization is
often one step removed from direct consideration of the criminal law per se, involving
consideration of both a particular law and its application to a set of facts. Human
rights jurisprudence does not therefore enjoy the liberty of in abstracto reasoning to
the same extent as employed by criminal law theorists. Rather, the overall position of
international human rights law on matters of criminalization must be constructed
from the human rights compatibility of specific criminalization contexts inherent in
the decisions of international courts and tribunals. Such decisions show that human
rights have a role in both neutralizing and triggering the criminal law. The frame-
work of international human rights law, as an area of international law in general,
presents certain constraints in the manner in which jurisprudence is generated and in
the perspective from which human rights questions are best answered. Once these
points have been recognized and well defined, the framework shows potential for
effective criminalization analysis alongside that of traditional criminalization theory.
3 Rights in criminal theory

Criminal law theory has enjoyed a period of intellectual vitality over the last few
decades. Nonetheless, when it comes to attempts to theorize the special part of
the criminal law, a number of contending theories still abound, with compara-
tively little agreement as to the most effective approach. Contemporary theories
do not differ appreciably from those debated almost 150 years ago: chiefly, con-
strained utilitarianism represented by the harm principle, and legal moralism.1
Within criminalization literature, comparatively few legal theorists have invoked
rights as a component of a developed criminal theory. Certainly none have done
so using the human rights of international human rights law. This is despite the
fact that the idea that in committing a crime the offender does not just violate
the law but potentially also the rights of the individual victim is centuries old.
In German legal thought, for example, Feuerbach pointed out in 1801 that
many crimes involved violations of individual rights.2
One critical issue in this respect is the particular notion of rights that is under-
stood and applied by legal theorists. Perhaps the most common approach is to
employ a conception of rights grounded in Kantian moral theory. Such concep-
tions use a theory of claim rights, whereby rights are viewed as horizontal claims
that one individual has against another or against society in general. David Rich-
ards, writing in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, grounds much of his work
on criminal theory within the framework of the neo-Kantian moral theories of
John Rawls and Alan Gewirth.3 In doing so, Richards invokes a form of moral-
ity based on the deontological concept that what is morally right cannot be
defined in terms of whether something maximizes goodness in the world, but
rather in terms of whether it expresses respect, on fair terms to all, for
a person’s capacity for autonomy.4 For Richards, human rights are thus forms of
coercive claim justified by the principle of autonomy. Under this approach,
Richards holds that the minimum boundary conditions for criminalization must

1 Lacey, N., 2009, p.937.

2 For a general review of German legal theory in English language, see Dubber, M.D., 2005.
3 Rawls, J., 1971; Gewirth, A., 1978.
4 Richards, D.A.J., 1981b, p.251.
28 Rights in criminal theory
be directed by a set of general moral principles of obligation, duty, and correla-
tive “human rights.”5
A key role of Richards’ human rights is to place particular constraints on the impos-
ition of criminal penalties in line with the imperatives of respect for autonomy and the
treatment of all persons as equals. Richards applies this particular conception of rights
to questions such as the (de)criminalization of prostitution and of certain forms of
drug use.6 The work of David Richards represents, at least in English language
literature, one of the first detailed attempts at the introduction of a rights-based
discourse into general criminalization theory. Nonetheless, the end results of Rich-
ard’s reasoning often have something of an ex post facto sense about them. In respect
of the question of (de)criminalization of drug use, for example, Richards argues that
higher-order interests in freedom and rationality identify respect for choices to use
drugs as an aspect of personal dignity worthy of protection under the constitutional
right to privacy.7 Richards reaches this conclusion after consideration of traditional
arguments for drug use based on harm to self and to others, paternalism, and societal
moralism. In essence, Richards effectively draws a connection between well-
established criminal theory arguments and a rights-based vision of autonomy, mutual
concern, respect, and the right to create one’s own life on terms fair to all.
Joel Feinberg, writing a few years after Richards, links his notion of rights to
the concept of harm, originally conceived by Mill, and which plays a central role
in many criminalization theories.8 In Feinberg’s 1984 work Harm to Others, he
holds that the subset of harms which should be considered for criminalization can
be defined in a sequential manner: as those that (i) represent a setback of interests
that; (ii) wrong the victim, in; (iii) a morally indefensible manner.9 In other
words, unlike Mill, Feinberg does not believe that harm alone is sufficient for
criminalization. Rather only those harms that are wrong in a morally indefensible
manner should attract criminal sanctions. The next step in Feinberg’s argument is
to define wrongfulness as a setback of interests that is at the same time a violation
of the victim’s rights. In order to define a point of reference that is external to the
criminal law, Feinberg clarifies that he is, in this context, referring to moral rights
rather than legal rights – that is, rights that are independent of and antecedent to
law, a conception strongly reminiscent of the doctrine of natural rights.10
In other words, for Feinberg, it is always a good reason in support of criminaliza-
tion that the restriction would probably be effective in preventing harm to a person
that, at the same time, wrongs him or her by violating his or her rights. As Feinberg
acknowledges, this raises the question as to whether the definition presupposes the

5 Richards, D.A.J., 1979b, p.1414.

6 Richards, D.A.J., 1979a; Richards, D.J., 1981a.
7 Richards, D.A.J., 1981a, pp.676–677.
8 Mill, J.S., 1974 (originally published 1859), and Feinberg, J., 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988.
Hereinafter: “Feinberg, Harm to Others;” “Feinberg, Offense to Others;” “Feinberg,
Harm to Self;” and “Feinberg, Harmless Wrongdoing.”
9 Feinberg, Harm to Others. p.106.
10 Ibid., p.111.
 Rights in criminal theory 29
existence of a complete moral system. If what is criminal is to be defined in part
with reference to what is a violation of natural or moral rights, then what is moral
must first be defined. Feinberg argues that this challenge can be overcome by an
appeal to basic welfare interests as the basis for the rights – which if violated in the
context of a setback of interests constitute wrongful harm and therefore warrant
criminalization. Feinberg does not go to great lengths to define such welfare rights
nor to establish thresholds of violation. Holding that nothing as elaborate as
a complete moral system is required, Feinberg refers simply to welfare rights as the
moral rights to life, minimal health, economic sufficiency, political liberty, and so
on. In Feinberg’s scheme, wrongful harm thus occurs by invading one of the wel-
fare interests whose maintenance at a minimal level is a necessary condition for the
advancement of any other interests at all.11
More recent use of rights in criminalization theory, such as proposed by Tatjana
Hörnle, similarly relies on a theory of claim rights, defined by what Hörnle describes
as “important spheres of liberty.”12 Whilst Hörnle explicitly recognizes the existence
of positive constitutional rights, she holds, in the same vein as Feinberg, that crimin-
alization theory cannot be anchored in a simple, genuinely positivistic way and seeks
rather to identify moral rights that can serve as the entrance decision of criminaliza-
tion theory, being the fundamental question for which protective purpose criminal
prohibitions may be used. Whereas Hörnle, Feinberg, and Richards follow the, quite
defensible, route of seeking to identify an autonomous concept of rights that can be
employed in criminalization theory, at the same time, this approach risks missing out
on potential gains from the field of international human rights law – not only from
its positivist jurisprudence but also from its underlying legal theory and philosophy.
Hörnle recognizes, for example, the human rights catalogue in a constitution as
a relevant point of reference but is largely persuaded by the criticism that national
positive law is too limited and that criminalization theory needs to work with the
concept of rights of others in a wider sense. In later chapters, this book argues that
international human rights law offers exactly that opportunity. The construction of
a theory of rights for the purposes of criminalization theory need not rely on de novo
identification of which rights should be recognized and which collective interests are
of high importance but, rather, can be informed by, and draw from, the concepts
and principles of international human rights law.

Use of rights in criminal theory – Feinberg’s welfare

interest rights
Amongst the legal theorists who employ conceptions of rights, Joel Fein-
berg in his four-part work, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, repre-
sents the most developed integration of rights into criminal theory. Being
committed to a liberal approach, Feinberg starts from the idea of “liberty-

11 Ibid., p.112.
12 Hörnle T., 2014, p.184.
30 Rights in criminal theory
limiting principles” as a requirement for criminalization, where liberty is understood
as the absence of legal coercion. To this end, Feinberg proposes a number of liberty-
limiting (or coercion-legitimizing) principles, which he defines as a consideration that
is always a morally relevant reason in support of penal legislation. Feinberg acknow-
ledges the existence of a number of potential liberty-limiting principles, including
harm, offense, paternalism, moralism, benefit, and perfectionism. His starting point,
expressed in a commitment to a liberal position on the moral limits of the criminal
law, is that only the harm and offense principles, duly clarified and qualified, between
them exhaust the class of good reasons for criminal prohibitions. This is in contrast
to what Feinberg describes as the extreme liberal position that only the harm
principle provides a good reason in support of criminal prohibition. In this context,
Feinberg describes the harm and offense principles as follows:

The Harm Principle: It is always a good reason in support of penal legisla-

tion that it would probably be effective in preventing (eliminating, redu-
cing) harm to persons other than the actor (the one prohibited from
acting) and there is probably no other means that is equally effective at no
greater cost to other values.
The Offense Principle: It is always a good reason in support of a proposed
criminal prohibition that it is probably necessary to prevent serious offense to
persons other the actor and would probably be an effective means to that end
if enacted.13

For Feinberg, a liberty-limiting principle is not, however, a sufficient condition for

criminalization, because in any given case its purportedly relevant reason may not
weigh heavily enough on the scales to outbalance the standing presumption in favour
of liberty. In the case of Feinberg’s liberty-limiting harm principle, for example, con-
siderations that must also be weighed on the scales include the magnitude of the
harm, the probability of harm, the relative importance of the harm, and the extent to
which a criminal prohibition limits the options open to an individual. Feinberg refers
to these considerations (and others) as “mediating maxims” for application of the lib-
erty-limiting principles. As Feinberg’s work progresses, through Harm to
Others, Offense to Others, Harm to Self, and Harmless Wrongdoing, his view
evolves and Feinberg concludes his enquiry with an endorsement of a somewhat
broader “cautious liberalism.” Feinberg’s cautious liberalism holds that only the
harm and offense principles state reasons that are always good, and frequently
decisive, for criminalization. It concedes, however, that legal moralism states
reasons that are sometimes (but rarely) good for criminalization.14 Feinberg’s
general notion of liberty-limiting principles largely survives in contemporary
criminalization literature. Commentators such as Simester and von Hirsch, for

13 Feinberg, Harm to Others, pp.26–28. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through
PLSclear.
14 Feinberg, Harmless Wrongdoing, p.324.
 Rights in criminal theory 31
example, broadly start from the position that criminal law limitations on free-
dom of action require principled justification.15 There is significant diversity,
however, in the principles that legal theorists are prepared to accept. Feinberg’s
offense principle, for instance, is often divisive, with some theorists supporting
the need for a separate offense principle of one form or another and others argu-
ing that such a principle is unnecessary or undesirable.16 A distinction is also
often made between the legal moralists’ single-element wrongfulness account, and
dual-element accounts, based on combinations of harm and wrongfulness.17 In
this regard, continued recognition of the role of both harm and wrongfulness in
criminalization theory is an important validation of the significance of Feinberg’s
approach.
The centrepiece of Feinberg’s criminalization scheme is, without doubt, his
harm principle: that the subset of harms which should be considered for crimin-
alization are those that represent a setback of interests that wrong the victim in
a morally indefensible manner. With respect to the interests that may be set
back, Feinberg observes that “interests” consist of all those things in which one
has a stake. He distinguishes between passing wants (such as to go to a movie),
which do not qualify as interests, and higher level wants, which are to be con-
sidered as interests. These interests include instrumental wants (such as to get
exercise), welfare interests (such as in emotional stability), and focal aims (such
as writing a book).18 To set back such an interest is, according to Feinberg, to
reverse its course or to put it in a worse condition than it was formerly in. In
Feinberg’s scheme, in order to support the possible use of criminal sanctions for
a particular conduct, the conduct must itself produce the setback of interests. As
Kai Ambos highlights, Feinberg’s harm principle is therefore traditionally
thought of as a consequentialist principle focusing on the effects of the conduct
to be prohibited.19 Whilst Feinberg acknowledges a range of interests that can
be, or risk being, set back by actions or omissions, he limits his harm principle
to one particular type of interest – that of welfare interests. This has the effect
of excluding instrumental wants and focal aims from the harm principle. He
does so with a view to requiring that conduct which may be criminalized not
only produce harm but also be wrongful in the sense of morally indefensible.
Feinberg holds that an element that is always present when one person wrongs
another is the violated right of the victim. Accordingly, Feinberg argues that
one person, A, can be said to wrong another, B, when B’s set-back interest is
one that he has a right to have respected.20 His next step is to identify welfare
interests as the grounds for valid rights claims. In other words, harm, for the

15 Simester, A.P., and von Hirsch, A., 2011, p.19.

16 See, for example, Simester, A.P., and von Hirsch, A., 2002; Simester, A.P., and von Hirsch,
A., 2011, pp.118–122; Alexander, L., 1994.
17 See, for example, Duff, R.A., 2007.
18 Feinberg, Harm to Others, p.59.
19 Ambos, K., 2015, p.314.
20 Feinberg, Harm to Others, p.107.
32 Rights in criminal theory
purposes of Feinberg’s harm principle, is a setback of interests that wrongs the
victim by violating his or her welfare rights. In his final work, Harmless Wrong-
doing, Feinberg describes this as harm1: “A adversely affects B’s interest,” and
harm2: “A adversely affects B’s interest and in so doing wrongs B (violates B’s
right).”21 Only harm2 is harm for the purposes of Feinberg’s harm principle.
As regards the nature of welfare interest rights, Feinberg focuses on welfare inter-
ests whose maintenance at a minimum level is a necessary condition for the advance-
ment of any other interests at all as the basis of rights claims. He describes these
welfare interests as interests in the necessary means to his more ultimate goals,
whatever the latter may be.22 Feinberg’s shortlist of welfare interest rights consists of
a moral right to life, minimal health, economic sufficiency, political liberty, and so
on. His longer explanation covers interests in the continuance for a foreseeable inter-
val of one’s life, and the interests in one’s own physical health and vigour, the integ-
rity and normal functioning of one’s body, the absence of absorbing pain and
suffering or grotesque disfigurement, minimal intellectual acuity, emotional stability,
the absence of groundless anxieties and resentments, the capacity to engage normally
in social intercourse and to enjoy and maintain friendships, at least minimal income
and financial security, a tolerable social and physical environment, and a certain
amount of freedom from interference and coercion. Feinberg also appears to later
add an interest in privacy to this list, which he defines as the absence of physical intru-
sions upon solitude and the absence of unpermitted disclosure of intimacies.23
There is much in Feinberg’s broad concept of welfare rights that is reminiscent of
neo-Kantian approaches, such as those developed by Gewirth and Rawls. A central
contention in Gewirthian moral theory, for example, is that agents need both freedom
and well-being, as it would be impossible to act towards those agent’s purposes
without these necessary conditions of agency.24 Gewirth argues that, on pain of self-
contradiction, each agent must accord to each other the same generic rights to free-
dom and well-being that he necessarily claims for himself.25 Gewirthian theory is itself
sometimes invoked as a basis for harm analysis. Alex Stevens suggests, for instance,
that harms can be seen as acts and conditions that infringe on rights to the freedom
and well-being that we all need as agents – essentially reproducing Feinberg’s scheme
in terms of Gewirthian generic rights.26 In the same way as Feinberg’s welfare inter-
ests are required as the necessary condition for the advancement of any other interests
at all, and Gewirthian generic rights are required for purposes, so Rawls, in the con-
text of justice, places the emphasis on the necessary means or primary goods required
to enable the exercise of moral powers and the pursuit of final ends.27 Rawls

21 Feinberg, Harmless Wrongdoing, p.xxviii. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor

through PLSclear.
22 Feinberg, Harm to Others, p.37 and 111.
23 Ibid., p.61 and 204.
24 Gewirth, A., 1996.
25 Gewrith, A., 1982.
26 Stevens, A., 2001.
27 Rawls, J., 1971.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Poliisipäällikkö Ullholm'in käsi vajosi ales pöydältä, ja hän
kumartui
Magdalenaan päin joka nyt nöyränä oli antanut päänsä vaipua ales.

— Nouskaa pois, neiti Rudenschöld, nouskaa pois! — lausui hän,

silmät kyyneleissä. — Jumalan kiitos, että huomaan teidät yhtä
jaloksi, kuin teitä pidinkin; olkaa vakuutettu siitä, että jos milloinkaan
näin julmiin keinoihin ryhdytään, pakoittaaksi teitä tunnustamaan,
tulee muiden kuin minun käteni sen tekemään! Minä elän
mieluummin vedellä ja leivällä, kuin taivun sellaiseen ilkityöhön, ja
tunnen itseni jo kyllin onnettomaksi, että olen teitä sillä uhannut.

Tämä näin hemmoiteltu kaunotar, jonka koko elämä oli ollut

lempimistä ja huvitusta, ja jonka pienintäkin toivomusta auliit henkilöt
olivat rientäneet täyttämään, oli äkkiä joutunut mitä katkerimpiin
olosuhteisin. Ne ystävyyden osoitteet, joita hänelle nyt tänä iltana ja
yönä oli suotu, olivat siis tehneet hänen mieleensä mitä
syvällisimmän vaikutuksen, ja ojentaen poliisipäällikölle kätensä,
lausui hän:

— Minä ylistän Jumalaa, että olen teissä löytänyt ystävän!

Liikutetulla mielellä riensi Ullholm pois; mutta Magdalena rupesi

jälleen lavitsalle istumaan. Hän ei kuitenkaan voinut nukkua, ja
hänen vilkas mielikuvitelmansa näytti hänelle milloin sellaisia
kohtauksia, joissa hän äsken oli ollut, milloin taas valoisempia ja
toivorikkaimpia, jolloin vankeuden portit avautuisi, ja vapaus häntä
kutsuisi.

Aamun ensimäinen, harmahtava sarastus oli juuri alkanut luoda

valonsa akkunan rautaristikkoon, kun raskaat oven teljet työnnettiin
auki, ja poliisipäällikkö jälleen astui sisään.
 — Teillä on jotakin uutta minulle ilmoitettavana, — lausui
Magdalena, mennen äkkiä häntä kohden. — Minä pyydän teitä
suoraan sanomaan minulle kaiken!

— Minulla ei ole mitään uutta teille ilmoitettavana, olenhan vaan

tullut teille sanomaan, ett'en enään palaja tänne.

— Ettekö palaja! — kertoi Magdalena epäröiden, — minä en

käsitä! Ilon säde tuikahti hänen mieleensä: olisikohan poliisipäällikkö
tullut sanomaan hänen pääsevän vapaaksi!

— Ei, ei, lausui hän, — ikäänkuin lukien hänen ajatuksiansa; —

asia on vaan sellainen, että minä en saa palata.

— Te olette olleet herttua-hallitsijan puheilla, — virkkoi Magdalena,

— ah, minä käsitän!

— Niin olen!

— Eikä hän hyväksy teidän sääliväisyyttänne minua kohtaan!

— Hän, sanoo, suokaatte anteeksi, armollinen neiti, — pieni

hymyily ilmestyi poliisipäällikön huulille, — hän sanoo minunkin teihin
rakastuneeni!

— Mutta sehän on kauheata!

— Minä vastasin herttualle, — jatkoi poliisipäällikkö vakavasti —

olevani viisikymmentä vuotias mies, joka ei varsin helposti rakastu,
ja että tarvitsee olla ainoastansa ihmisyyttä sääliäksensä teidän
kohtaloanne.
 — Kiitoksia, kiitoksia!… Mutta nyt minä tulen teidät kadottamaan,
ystäväiseni!

— Ei kadottamaan… en tule laiminlyömään mitään, jonka voin

tehdä teidän asianne eduksi.

— Tieto teidän olemisestanne minun läheisyydessäni olisi antanut

minulle enemmän rohkeutta.

— Se ei tule teitä pettämään… teillä on luja mieli ynnä ponteva

tahto, ja juuri tänään tulee teidän koettaa näyttäytyä levolliselta, sillä
te tulette hovioikeuden tutkittavaksi.

Magdalena pani kätensä ristiin. Hiljainen huokaus kuului hänen

huuliltansa; ne tuskat, joita hän tähän asti oli saanut kärsiä, olivat siis
ainoastansa alussa, ja uusi kilvoituksen paikka oli hänelle jo
määrättynä.

— Nyt vielä yksi neuvo, ennenkuin menen, — jatkoi Ullholm: —

Älkäätte milloinkaan unohtako sävyisyyden tulevan olemaan teidän
parhain aseenne. Jos te kiivastutte, menetätte tuon arvollisuutenne,
joka viehättää ja joka on teidän varmin turvanne.
VIIDESKYMMENESSEITSEMÄS LUKU.

Tuo ilmisaatu kapinaliitto ja neiti Rudenschöld'in käräjäjuttu herätti

tietysti yleistä huomiota, ja tutkintoa seurattiin suurella
uteliaisuudella.

Neiti Rudenschöld'iä viedessä kello yhdeksän seuraavana

aamuna paljastetuilla sapelilla varustettujen upseerein ja
sotamiesten ympäröimänä hovioikeuteen, oli siellä paitsi oikeuden
jäseniä kolme- tahi neljäkymmentä nuorta lainoppinutta saapuvilla,
jotka olivat tulleet tänne uteliaisuudesta. Tämä ensimäinen tutkinto
kesti kuusi tuntia, jolla aikaa neiti Rudenschöld'in seisovallansa täytyi
vastata syyttäjän kysymyksiin. Muistaen poliisipäällikkö Ullholmin
neuvoa, oli hän päättänyt antaa kylmäverisesti vastauksensa, ja kun
hänelle tehtiin joku loukkaava kysymys, joka herätti hänen
mielikarvauttansa, hän vaikeni, kunnes hänen kiivautensa oli mennyt
ohitse. Ensimmäisen kerran kun tämä tapahtui, kertoi syyttäjä kolme
kertaa kysymyksensä, koroittaen lopulta äänensä kirkumiseksi.
Hymyillen pyysi neiti Rudenschöld häntä silloin säästämään
keuhkojansa, sillä hän ei sanonut olevansa kuuro. Tämä huomasi
nyt syyn hänen käytökseensä, eikä enään koskaan kertonut
kysymyksiänsä.
 Magdalenan palattua vankeuteen, oli vahtimiehiä muutettu. Nuot
häntä nyt vartijoivat upseerit selittivät hauskuudeksensa kaikki
pahoin päin, hänen unensakin, sillä hänen puhuessaan levottomana
unissansa, ilmoitettiin ne nimetkin, jotka silloin pääsivät hänen
huuliltansa. Tämän huomasi Magdalena syyttäjän kummallisista
kysymyksistä, ja peläten todellakin tulevansa jotakin ilmaisemaan,
päätti hän olla niin paljon kuin suinkin nukkumatta. Hän pisti nyt
nenäliinan suuhunsa, joten hän heräsi joka kerta, kun hän oli
puremaisillaan yhteen hampaansa tahi liikuttamaisillaan kieltänsä ja
pysyi siis hereillä aamupuoleen asti, jolloin upseerit itsekin
rauenneina nukkuivat. Vasta silloin uskalsi Magdalena antautua tälle
onnettomien ainoalle nautinnolle; mutta unen tuottama tervetullut
katkerien kärsimysten unohtuminen ei kuitenkaan kestänyt kauan,
sillä jo kello kuusi aamusella muutettiin vahtia, jolloin hänen tuli
nousta vuoteeltansa ja pukeutua.

Mutta tämä hänen vuoteelta nousemisensa tapahtui siten, että

hänen kamarineitsyensä, joka myöskin oli vangittu, vaikka tätä
pidettiin toisessa huoneessa, päästettiin hänen luoksensa panemaan
hänen vaatteensa vuoteen vieressä olevalle tuolille, jonka tehtyä
hänen oli meneminen ulos. Vartijaupseerit eivät koskaan menneet
huoneesta, jonka vuoksi neiti Rudenschöld pukeusi vuoteensa
verhojen takana, ja hankaluus sangen pitkän ja paksun tukkansa
silittämiseen tällaisessa olossa pakoitti neiti Rudenschöldiä eräänä
päivänä leikkuuttamaan hiuksensa aivan lyhyeksi. Hänen koiransa
ynnä käsityönsä häneltä kiellettiin, ja pyytäessänsä kirjoja aikansa
kuluttamiseksi, lähetti paroni Reuterholm hänelle rukin. Näinä pitkinä
sielua masentavina hetkinä alkoi hän sitte kirjoittaa värsyjä
vankihuoneensa seiniin mutta näiden ulkopuolella levisi kuitenkin
pian maine siitä kovasta kohtelusta, jota hän sai kärsiä; yleiseen
häntä säälittiin ja kerrottiimpa vielä tehdyksi heikko yritys hänen
vapauttamiseksensakin.

Maaliskuun loppuun asti häntä käytettiin hovioikeudessa

tutkisteltavana ja tuntemassa sen semmoisiakin henkilöitä. Usein
häntä silloin loukkaisivat sellaisetkin, joita hän yhdellä ainoalla
sanalla olisi voinut todistaa paljon syyllisemmäksi itseänsä ja jotka
osoittamalla hänelle ylenkatsettansa toivoivat itse pääsevänsä
syyttömiksi. Hän oli kuitenkin lujasti päättänyt, ett'ei hän ilmaisisi
keitäkään muita, paitsi itseänsä, ja pöytäkirjat näyttävät hänen
peruuttaneen omat kirjoituksensakin, kun asia koski jonkun toisen
suojelemista, ja hän väitti sellaisissa tapauksissa sanojansa
valheeksi tahi omaksi keksinnöksensä.

Maaliskuun 26 päivänä ilmoitti vihdoin kanneviskaali neiti

Rudenschöld'in asian olevan selvillä ja vaatineensa hänen
vapauttamistansa velvollisuudella tulla jälleen kutsuttaessa
saapuville, vaan että herttua-hallitsija oli nähnyt soveliaaksi, että
häntä pidettäisiin vankeudessa, kunnes paroni Armfelt'in
manausaika oli kulunut, eli toukokuun 30 päivään, jolloin hänen oli
joko itsensä saapuminen paikalle, tahi hänet tuomittaisiin
kuulustelematta. Iloisella tunteella palasi neiti Rudenschöld
vankiuteensa. Salakirjaimista ei kukaan ollut saanut selkoa, ja
yksityisestä kirjevaihdosta ei hänelle voinut tuomita rangaistusta;
pian vapaaksipääsemisen toivo häämöitti loppua näille
tuomiopöydän ääressä olleille kohtauksille, joita unheen verho pian
tulisi peittämään.
VIIDESKYMMENESKAHDEKSAS
LUKU.

Iltaisella, Huhtikuun 8 päivänä, oli herttua kutsunut kirjastoonsa

valtionvalvojan, valtiokanslerin, presidentin paroni Kurckin, paroni
Reuterholm'in ja oikeuskansleri Loden. Pöydällä oli paksuja,
kirjoitettuja paperikääryjä, ja laskien kätensä yhdelle niistä, lausui
herttua-hallitsija:

— Onnellisen sattuman kautta, jota en rohjennut toivoakaan, olen

saanut käsiini ne asiakirjat, jotka todistavat paroni Armfelt'in
rikoksellisen osallisuuden siihen kapinaliittoon, jolla on tarkoitettu
hallituksen kumoamista ja valtakunnan asettamista vieraan vallan
hoidonalaiseksi.

— Kas tässä, hyvät herrat, — jatkoi herttua, — lukekaa itse nämät

kirjeet Armfelt'ilta, Ehrenström'iltä ja neiti Rudenschöld'iltä…
salakirjainten selitys on kaikeksi onneksi löydetty; mitä ennen vaan
epäiltiin, on nyt näytetty todeksi, ja maamme on temmattu vaarasta,
joka täydellä todella on sen turvallisuutta uhannut.

Herttua vaikeni, ja noiden lukevien herrojen kasvot ilmaisivat mitä

suurinta hämmästystä sekä velvollista mielikarvautta
valtiorikoksesta, jonka johtajana selvästi todistettiin olleen paroni
Armfelt, Ruotsin ministeri Italiassa ja joka monen sadan penikulman
päästä oli pitänyt kädessänsä sen vehkeilyn ohjat, jonka surulliset
seuraukset nyt niin raskaasti tulivat sattumaan siihen osallisiin.

— Neiti Rudenschöld on täällä kaiken toimittaja ja alkuunpanija, —

keskeytti Reuterholm loistavin silmin, eikä laisinkaan koettaen salata
kostonhimoansa, joka ei sallinut hänen koskaan suoda anteeksi
tuolle ihanalle naiselle sitä vaikutusmahtia, jota hänellä herttuaan
nähden oli, mahtia, joka olisi voinut tulla niin vaaralliseksi
Renterholm'ille itsellensä; — hän on juonillansa houkutellut mitä
rehellisimpiäkin miehiä salaliittoon, — jatkoi hän, miehiä sellaisia
kuin esim. meidän nuoren kuninkaamme opettajan, kreivi
Gyldenstolpen. Hän on mitä viekoittelevin nainen, — paroni
Reuterholm'in silmäykset olivat vakavasti luotuina
himmenemättömällä loistolla herttuaan, lisätessänsä: — nainen,
jonka mielestä ei mikään ole pyhää ja joka terävällä sekä purevalla
kielellänsä ryhtyy kaikkeen, — jatkoi Reuterholm, selaillen neiti
Rudenschöld'in monia sekä tiheään kirjoitettuja kirjeitä — jotka
tekivät pilaa ja ivasivat kaikkia, jotka tarkoittavat hänen parastansa…
niin, hän on vähintänsäkin sanottu, vaarallinen ja hän ansaitsee
todellakin sen ankaran rangaistuksen, johon laki tulee hänet
tuomitsemaan.

— Niin, niin, lausui herttua kiivaudella; sitte käski hän valtion

valvojaa seuraavana päivänä kutsumaan ko'olle Svean
hovioikeuden, jotta tutkinto voisi heti alkaa.

Kaikki vetäytyivät nyt pois, paitsi Reuterholm, joka jäi yksinänsä

herttuan luokse.
 — Sinua, ystäväiseni tulee minun kiittää näistä tärkeistä
papereista, jotka ovat opettaneet minua täydellisesti ottamaan
selvää tuon rikoksellisen naisen vehkeistä, — lausui herttua, joka
sytyttäen tupakkapiippunsa nyt kääntyi suosikkiinsa, ja puhaltaen
suustansa paksuja savuja lisäsi hän: — nämät paperit ovat tosin
maksaneet suuria summia, mutta sitä minä en kadu…

— Niin, sellaisen herran, kuin Armfelt'in jälillä pysyminen ei ollut

mikään helppo asia, mutta ilman Ruotsin Romassa olevaa konsulia,
Piranesia, en olisi voinut mitään saada aikaan. Sitä suurta
palvelusta, jonka hän on tehnyt meille… minä tarkoita Ruotsille, tulisi
teidän kuninkaallisen korkeutenne kuninkaallisesti palkitakin.

— Mitähän sanot isosta hohtokivillä varustetusta sormuksesta,

jossa on kuninkaan muotokuva, ja Pohjantähden ritarin merkistä
sekä kohteliaasta kirjeestä kaikki kuninkaan nimessä!

— Niin, ne ovat hyvät; mutta minä haluaisin vielä lisätä jotakin…

— Puhu, ystäväiseni, puhu!

— Ennenkuin esittelen mitään, tahtoisin muutamalla sanalla

koskettaa Piranesin käytöstä tässä vaikeassa asiassa. Tarkoin
tuntien Italiassa vallitsevan vakoilemisen, pääsi hän Armfelt'in jälille;
tämän kirjeenvaihdosta Venäjän kanssa ja milt'ei yksinomaisesta
seurustelemisesta venäläisten tahi niiden kanssa, jotka olivat
tunnetut Ranskan vihollisiksi, vieläpä tämän pienimmistäkin
hankkeista sekä salaisimmista puheistakin kuin myöskin tuosta
"Katsahduksesta Kustaa III:nen historiaan," tahi, oikeammin sanottu
häväistyskirjoituksesta teidän kuninkaallista korkeuttanne vastaan,
niin, kaikesta tästä kertoi minulle Piranesi jo varhemmin. Mutta eipä
siinä kylläksi; meidän milt'ei jo epäillessä noiden salakirjainten
selityksen saamisesta, käsitimme sen Piranesilta, — paroni
Palmqvistin ei onnistunut saada kouriinsa Armfelt'ia eikä hänen
paperejansa; asia olisi ollut menetetty, jos ei Piranesi olisi oivaltanut
lahjoa erästä palvelijaa, joka oli ollut Armfelt'in apuna kaivamassa
erääsen puutarhaan sitä lipasta, jossa hän tallenteli kirjeitänsä ja
muita paperejansa. Nämät tärkeät asiakirjat ovat nyt teidän
kuninkaallisen korkeutenne pöydällä, ja tutkimusta voi jatkaa…
koettakoon Armfelt päästä pakoonkin; mutta tuomion tuottamaa
häpeätä hän ei kuitenkaan voi paeta!

— Niin, sinä olet oikeassa, me olemme todellakin Piranesille

sangen suuressa kiitollisuuden velassa.

— Hän on minun ystäväni, — paroni Reuterholm pani päänsä

pystyyn; minkä kunnioituksen hän täten osoitti tuolle Ruotsin
konsulille, tunsi hyvin tuo ylpein ja korskein Ruotsin aatelisista, — ja
minun ystävänäni soisin häntä palkittavankin. Esittelen hänet siis
Ruotsin ministeriksi roomalaisessa hovissa, kolmentuhannen scudin
vuotuisella palkalla sekä elinkautisella eläkerahalla.

Herttua puhalsi paksun savupilven suustansa, samalla kertaa kuin

siinä silmäyksessä, jonka hän loi suosikkiinsa, oli milt'ei
hämmästyksen kummastelemista.

— Ministeriksikö — kertoi hallitsija epäillen, — se ei käyne

laatuun… noh, niin, mielelläni minun puolestani! lisäsi hän äkkiä ja
sävyisästi mukiin menemällä, huomatessaan suosikkinsa rypistyneet
kulmakarvat ja synkän katsannon.

— Teidän, armollinen herrani, tahdon täyttäminen tulee minusta

olemaan hauskaa, — lausui paroni Reuterholm pienellä
päännyökkäyksellä, mutta alkakaamme nyt ottaa selkoa näistä
kirjeistä.

Seuraavana, huhtikuun 4 päivänä, kokoontui neuvosto

uudestansa. Kuningas vietiin hallitsijan työhuoneesen, joka sijaitsi
sen huoneen vieressä, jossa neuvottelua pidettiin. Hallitsija antoi nyt
hänelle tiedon kaikesta, näyttäen hänelle niitä papereja, joita he
olivat saaneet ilmi, sekä lausui hänelle, mikä kohtalo hänen
opettajaansa, kreivi Gyldenstolpea, odotti.

— Se tullee olemaan mitä kauhein, — lisäsi hallitsija, — kuten

teidän majesteettinne helposti voi huomata, ja minä kysyn siis,
tahtooko teidän majesteettinne Gyldenstolpea tuomittavaksi lain
koko ankaruudella, vai pitäisikö häntä kohdella sillä lempeydellä,
jonka pidän, hänen ikäänsä ja asemaansa teidän majesteettinne
luona nähden, soveliaana.

Kustaa Aadolf, vaikka vielä lapsi, käyttäytyi kuitenkin sangen

järkevästi. Hän lausui tuskin sanaakaan, vaan jätti setänsä
toimitettavaksi milt'ei kaiken, mitä tämä piti hyödyllisenä ja
tarpeellisena; kuitenkin lisäsi hän aina pitävänsä parempana
lempeyttä, mikäli se oli sopusoinnussa oikeuden kanssa, etenkin kun
kysymys oli kreivi Gyldenstolpen arvoisesta henkilöstä, joka jo kauan
oli nauttinut sekä kuninkaan isän että hänenkin ystävyyttänsä.

Vähän tämän jälkeen vietiin kuningas neuvottelusaliin, jossa

hänelle ilmoitettiin koko salaliitto.

Tyyneydellä ja näyttämättä tyytyväisyyden tahi tyytymättömyyden

merkkiäkään kuulteli hän, mitä hänelle ilmoitettiin; sitte noudatti hän
herttuan kehoitusta palajamaan työhuoneesen, jott'ei hänen tarvitsisi
vastenmielisesti olla todistajana entisen opettajansa nöyrytykseen ja
rangaistukseen. Heti tämän jälkeen tuotiin kreivi Gyldenstolpe
sisään, ja hänelle luettua Armfelt'in kirjeen, tunnusti hän itsensä
syylliseksi ja tuskin koki puolustaakaan itseänsä. Tuo vanha mies sai
sitte nuhteita herttualta, joka samalla julisti Gyldenstolpen virkansa
menettäneeksi sekä kielletyksi enään oleskelemasta Tukholmassa ja
että hänet armosta ynnä laupeudesta vapautettaisiin muusta
kanteesta rikokseensa syyllisenä. Gyldenstolpe kumarsi ja pyysi,
liikutettuna tästä hänelle osoitetusta, suuresta ja ansaitsemattomasta
armosta, saada suudella herttuan kättä, joka hänelle sallittiin ja jonka
tehtyä hän meni pois. Sitte kutsuttiin kuningas jälleen huoneesen,
jolloin korkealla äänellä julkiluettiin hänen herttuan nimessä annettu
käskynsä Svean hovioikeudelle viivyttelemättä ryhtymään ja joutuin
antamaan tuomionsa kysymyksessä olevassa valtiorikoksessa,
huolimatta paroni Armfelt'ia koskevasta manausajasta, jonka ohessa
Armfelt itse olisi tuomittava, niin pian kuin mainittu aika olisi kulunut,
vaikk'ei hän olisikaan saapuvilla. Tämä kuninkaan käsky sekä
Armfeltin paperit jätettiin nyt valtion valvojan käteen, jonka tehtyä
neuvosto hajosi.
VIIDESKYMMENESYHDEKSÄS LUKU.

Huhtikuun lopussa kutsuttiin neiti Rudenschöld jälleen tutkintoon.

— Magdalenan sukulainen, valtionvalvoja Kaarlo Axel

Wachtmeister, joka oli hovioikeuden esimies, otti häntä vastaan
seuraavilla sanoilla:

— Teidän ei ole enään aika koettaa pitää oikeutta pimeydessä, —

jotka sanat lausuttiin kiivaalla, milt'ei kiljuvalla äänellä; — tässä ovat
nyt kaikki teidän kirjeenne, jotka ovat Armfelt petturilta otetut.

Armfet'ko petturi! Kuullessansa nämät sanat kulki heikko väristys

Magdalenan hennon vartalon läpi, ja heleä puna nousi hänen
kalpeille poskillensa.

Valtionvalvoja veti nyt esille ison paperikääryn, ja kaikki neiti

Rudenschöldin kirjeet luettiin ääneen.

— Vaikk'ei niissä ole nimeä, en kuitenkaan kiellä niitä

kirjoittaneeni, — lausui Magdalena, nostaen päänsä pystyyn; — olen
niissä tosin väliin lausunut ankaria ja moittivia sanoja sekä heittänyt
itseni vapaasti ivallisen luonteeni valtaan, koettaen hauskuttaa
paroni Armfelt'ia pilapuheillani; mutta lauseitani tässä yksityisessä
kirjevaihdossa ei voi pitää valtiollisena vehkeilynä eikä minua siis
niistä tuomita.

— Teidän päänne tulee putoamaan, - vastasi valtionvalvoja

entisellä kiivaudellansa, — mutta herttua, joka on aina lempeä,
tahtoo kuitenkin pelastaa teidän sieluparkanne, jonka te syöksette
kadotukseen, sekä on määrännyt saman pappismiehen, joka valmisti
Ankarströmiäkin kuolemaan, käymään teidänkin luonanne
herättämään teidän rikoksellisen tekonne suhteen paatunutta ja
nukkuvaa omaatuntoa.

— Kaikki puna oli kadonnut neiti Rudenschöld'in poskilta; hänen

päänsä oli yhä pystyssä, ja leimuavin silmin katseli hän
valtionvalvojaa.

— Lakatkaa, teidän ylhäisyytenne, — lausui hän, mitä

kiihkoisimmin ärsytettynä näin säälimättömästä kohtelusta, — minä
olen jo liian pitkältä kuunnellut teidän puhettanne, joka häpäisee
teidän virkaanne. — Magdalena vaikeni, ja syvään hengäisten jatkoi
hän sitte: — Valtiollisen toimintanihan tähden olenkin kutsuttu tämän
oikeuden eteen, joka tulee antamaan siitä tuomionsa, — ja
yksityisestä elämästäni olen velkapää tilintekoon ainoastansa
Jumalalle, joka tutkii kaikkein sydämet ja tulee kerran tuomitsemaan
minut samoinkuin hallitsijankin samalla oikeudella.

Magdalena oli lausunut nämät sanat tuolla tyynellä arvollisuudella,

joka aina oli huomattava hänen käytöksessään oikeuden edessä;
mutta tuo ankara ponnistus, jolla hän hillitsi luonteensa
kiivastumasta ja ne mielenliikutukset, joita hän oikeuden lukiessa
hänen kirjeitänsä oli tuntenut, kaikki nämät yhdessä saivat hänet nyt
horjumaan, ja, kaaduttuaan laattialle mitä ankarimmissa
väristyksissä, vietiin hän milt'ei tunnottomassa tilassa takaisin
vankeuteen.

Tutkintoa jatkettiin sitte uudella innolla sekä kostonhimolla, ja

oikeuden monet sekä pitkät pöytäkirjat painettiin sitä tehden. Näiden
joukossa oli joitakuita neiti Rudenschöld'in Armfelt'ille kirjoittamia
rakkaudenkirjeitäkin; heidän kiivaimmat vihamiehensä pitivät huolta
siitäkin, että pöytäkirjasta, joissa oli otteita äskenmainituista
Armfelt'in ja neiti Rudenschöldin kirjeistä, julkaistiin eräs lyhempi
painos, täynänsä mitä katkerimpia ivasanoja, jotka oli olevinansa
valaisevia muistutuksia. Tämä kirja ilmestyi ensin saksankielellä, ja
se painettiin heti jälkeenpäin ruotsinkielelläkin, nimellä; Kustaa
Mauritz, isänmaansa petturi.

Tämä tuon ranskalaisen vallankumouksen merkillinen aikakausi

ikäänkuin täytti ilman uusilla aatteilla, joita jokainen kansakunta imi
itseensä; mutta tämän vapauden laajemman näköpiirin sisällä tunsi
roistoväki katkeruutensa onnellisempia lähimäisiänsä kohtaan
lisääntyvän. Nyt oli taas yksi onnen helmalapsi syösty kadehditusta
asemastansa! — Magdalena Rudenschöld'in kohtalo tuli joka
miehen suuhun, ja jos paroni Reuterholm tuolla äskenmainitulla
häväistyskirjoituksellansa, joka herätti kunkin oikein ajattelevan
mielikarvautta, oli koettanutkin vaikuttaa rahvaan huonoihin
intohimoihin, ei hän siinä pettynytkään; kumminkin sai hän
kostonhimonsa siihen määrään tyydytetyksi, että Magdalenan
rakkaudenkirjeitä, katupoikain väärenteleminä, huudettiin ja
hoilaeltiin tuon milt'ei jo seitsenkymmenvuotiaan leskikreivitär
Rudenschöldin akkunain alla.

Kun tuomio tuossa yhä jatkuvassa oikeusjutussa oli julistettava,

sai kanneviskaali Örbom viittauksen yläilmoista, että hän vaatisi neiti
Rudenschöldiä tuomittavaksi menettämään henkensä, kunniansa ja
omaisuutensa, ja että hänen mestauksensa tapahtuisi siten että
häneltä ensin katkaistaisiin oikea käsi, ja sitte kaula. Kanneviskaali
kieltäytyi kuitenkin tekemästä tätä vaatimusta, väittäen sen olevan
kaikkea lakia vastaan. Siitä huolimatta sai hän uuden käskyn ynnä
asessorin valtakirjan, jonka hän kuitenkin lähetti takasin, selittäen
itseänsä voitavan pakoittaa tähän ainoastansa herttua-hallitsijan
kirjallisella käskyllä, joka tulisi säilytettäväksi arkistossa hänen
puolustukseksensa. — Kirjallinen käsky tuli, ja hän teki myöskin
mainitun vaatimuksen.

Ennen hovioikeuden tuomion tekemistä, pidettiin äänestys, jossa

neiti Rudenschöld vapautettiin kuolemanrangaistuksesta yhden
äänen enemmistöllä, ennenkuin valtionvalvoja oli antanut molemmat
äänensä. Miten nämät tulisivat lankeamaan huomataan edellisestä.
Nyt tahtoi kuitenkin hallitus äänestyksen käymään tasaan ennenkuin
valtionvalvoja antoi lausuntonsa, jotta langettava tuomio ratkaistaisiin
äänienemmistöllä, jonkatähden päätettiin pitää seuraavana päivänä
uusi äänestys. — Reuterholmin sihteeri, joka oli Edman nimeltään,
koetti nyt houkutella erästä oikeuden jäsentä (62) muuttamaan
äänensä vapauttavasta langettavaksi ja piti häntä maaseudulla,
kunnes oikeuden istunnon hetki tuli, sekä vei hänet suorastansa
hovioikeuteen, suomatta hänelle hetkeäkään miettimisen aikaa.
Tämä peruutti sitte edellisen päivän lausuntonsa ja äänesti
kuolemanrangaistusta. Tarkoitus oli saavutettu. Valtion valvojan
molemmat, samaa vaativat äänet tekivät enemmistön.

Tämä tuomio julistettaisiin neiti Rudenschöldille avonaisien ovien

sisällä.
 Edellisenä eli kesäkuun 30 päivänä istui Magdalena eräässä
nurkassa, tuossa kauheassa vankilassa, jossa häntä yhä edelleenkin
oli pidetty, sittekun hänen täytyi lähteä omista huoneistansa.
Suviaurinko paahtoi kovasti sekä loi huoneesen muutamia säteitä
akkunan rautaristikon välistä ja tuo kirkas päivä valaisi jokaisen
sopukankin, niinkään peittävän varjon lievittämättä tuota hänen
ympärillänsä vallitsevan kurjuuden kauheutta, jota hänen silmänsä
näki, samalla kun kyyneleet vitkallisesti valuivat hänen poskillensa.

Kaipaisiko neiti Rudenschöld entistä mukavuuttansa, vai katuiko

hän kentiesi tuota suurta syntiä, jonka hän oli tehnyt hallitsijaa
vastaan vehkeilemisillään? — Hänen molemmatkin vartijansa
katselivat häntä tähystelevillä silmäyksillä; kentiesi olisi hän sattunut
lausumaan jonkun sanan, jonka he sitte saisivat jonakin uutisena
kertoa? Mutta neiti Rudenschöld istuikin äänetöinnä, ja hänessä
työskentelevät ajatukset pyrkivät ilmoille ainoastansa hiljaisessa
huokauksessa sekä tuossa verkalleen ja hänen tietämättänsä
valuvassa kyyneleessä. Hänen ajatuksensa oli kaukana, niin,
kaukana, kaukana… ne harhailivat ikäänkuin etsien avaruudessa, —
missähän hänen lemmittynsä nytkin oli? Ah, hän oli vapaa? Sehän
oli riemullinen varmuus, hänen — Magdalenan sielun avion ei
tarvinnut väärien tuomarien edessä kumartaa uljasta päätänsä;
Magdalena nautti hänen vapaudestansa, milloin hänen ajatuksensa
lensivät hänen luoksensa. Olihan Magdalena ja hän yksi, ja kun
jommankumman heistä, jotka kuuluivat tähän yhteyteen tuli kärsiä,
olihan Magdalenan mielestä onni, että se oli juuri hän itse. Jospa
vaan Armfelt pääsisi kaikesta pahasta, jospa hän iloisesti hymyilisi,
sillaikaa kuin Magdalena — niin, hän ei kuitenkaan muuta voinut,
kuin yksinänsä itkeä; sillä mitäpä hän oikeastansa Armfelt'ista
tiesikään? Mitä tiesi hän kenestäkään? Mitähän hänen onnetoin
äitinsä sekä hänen sukulaisensa hänestä ajattelivat? Mutta ei hän
voinut antaa itsellensä minkäänmoista vastausta, — suljettuna
ulkomaailmasta, oli hän ikäänkuin elävänä kuollut.

Lähestyvät askeleet keskeyttivät nyt tuon ulkopuolella vallitsevan

syvän äänettömyyden.

— Tämä hame on annettava neiti Rudenschöld'ille,

pukeutuaksensa siihen huomenna, mennessään kuulemaan
hovioikeuden tuomiota.

Magdalena kuuli selvään nämät vartijoille lausutut sanat, ja hän

tunsi poliisipäällikkö Ullholm'in äänen. Hänen ensimäinen tunteensa
oli iloa, kuullessaan ystävän olevan näin lähellä, ja toinen
miettimistä. Huvituksien pyörteissä oli hän antautunut ainoastansa
silmänräpäyksen viehätykselle ja mielioikuillensa sekä tunteidensa
valtaan. Yksinäisyys oli opettanut häntä nyt miettimään.

Hametta tuodessa hänelle, huomasi hän sen olevan oman

kauneimman, valkoisen pukunsa; tämän sekä poliisipäällikön
sanojen arvasi hän jotakin merkitsevän, ja että se ystävä, jonka hän
vankeutensa ajalla oli voittanut, tarkoitti, että hänen jostakin
tärkeästä syystä itse pitäisi mennä kuulemaan hovioikeuden
päätöstä.

Vielä paremmin käsitti hän asian laidan olevan sellaisen, kun

ennenmainittu Edman iltaisella astui hänen luoksensa, tuoden
terveisiä herttualta ja Reuterholm'ilta, että hänen itse ei tarvinnut
tulla kuulemaan tuomiotansa, koska tuo kohtaus tulisi hänelle liian
tuskalliseksi, päälliseksi kun peljättiin hänen joutuvan alttiiksi
rahvaan raivolle, vaan että syyttäjä tulisi hänen luoksensa
vankeuteen, lukemaan hänelle päätöksen.
 — Enpä suinkaan tahdo peräytyä täyttämästä hovioikeuden
käskyä tulemaan saapuville, — vastasi Magdalena tyynellä
vakavuudella, — ja minä tunnen itselläni olevan siihen tarpeeksi
voimia. (63)

Hän huomasi poliisipäällikön tarkoituksen olleen, että hän näyttäisi

kauniilta ja viehättävältä. Hän pukeusi siis mitä huolellisimmin. Nuot
lyhyeksi leikatut hiukset ympäröivät luonnollisilla kiharilla hänen
hieno-ihoisia kasvojansa, jotka olivat menettäneet hiukan
pulleudestansa, hänen silmänsä olivat tulleet loistavammiksi ja
hänen silmäyksessänsä oli jotakin enkelintapaista, samalla kuin
hänen liikkeissänsä oli naisen tieto viehätysvoimastansa.

Kuuden vartijamiehen ja neljän upseerin ympäröimänä astui hän

hovioikeuteen noita monia portaita, jotka johtivat ylimäiseen
etehiseen. Ollen vielä alhaalla, näki hän nämät jo täynnänsä väkeä
aina katon rajaan asti.

Samalla hetkellä, kun neiti Rudenschöld astui jalkansa ylimäiselle

portaalle, paljastivat kaikki hänelle päänsä. Tuo kunnioitus, joka
näyttiihe tällaisessa vastaanotossa, herätti hänessä suloisen
tunteen, ja hänen ahdistettu sydämensä sai tästä tarpeellista
turvallisuutta. Silloin riensi joukosta muuan nuori mies, jonka kasvoja
hän ei milloinkaan ennen ollut nähnyt ja joka lähestyi yhä enemmän
sekä, tunkien vartijajoukon läpi, tarjosi neiti Rudenschöld'ille
orjantappura- ja muistokukan. Tällöin tuli Magdalenan silmiin
kyyneleet, joita hän ei voinut pidättää, ja hänen sielunsa oli täynnä
kiitollisuutta sekä haikeutta.

Saleissa, joiden läpi häntä nyt vietiin oli yhtäläinen väentungos;

läsnäolijat olivat kiivenneet pöydille ja istuimille sekä toistensa
olkapäille; he kilpailivat saadaksensa nähdä häntä vilahdukseltakin,
ja kaikkiaalla ilmautui sama äänetöin sääliväisyys.

Neiti Rudenschöld sijoitettiin etimäiseksi pöydän yläpäähän

kaikkein näkyviin, ja jokainen silmäys, joka häneen luotiin, ilmaisi
sääliväisyyttä. Magdalenan silmät katselivat tätä liikkumatointa
väkijoukkoa ja pysähtyivät sitte hänen toveriinsa onnettomuudessa,
Aminoff'iin ja Ehrenström'iin. — Magdalenan silmissä näkyi rukous
antamaan anteeksi, johon nämät vastasivat lempeillä ja lohduttavilla
silmäyksillä. Heti tämän jälkeen luki syyttäjä näiden kumpaisenkin
herran kuolemantuomion; mutta tuskin oli hän ehtinyt mainita neiti
Rudenschöld'in nimeä, ennenkuin sekava nurina ja uhkaavat liikkeet
väen puolelta panivat valtionvalvojan, kreivi Wachtmeister'in,
säpsähtämään, ja tarttuen kiivaasti vasaransa, löi hän kovasti kolme
kertaa pöytään sekä vaati vaitioloa, mutta turhaan, sillä nurina kasvoi
yhä suuremmaksi, ja liikkeet tulivat yhä peloittavimmiksi.

Neiti Rudenschöld nosti silloin rukoilevin silmin kättänsä, ja kaikki

vaikenivat.

Neiti Rudenschöld'in tuomio, joka sitte julkiluettiin, alkoi ensiksi

sillä, että hän oli ollut osallinen niihin hankkeisiin, joita Kustaa
Mauritz Maununpoika (64) oli yrittänyt valtakunnan hallitusmuodon
muuttamisen tarkoituksessa, jota aijottiin panna toimeen sillä tavoin,
että herttua-hallitsija lahjoittaisiin rahoilla luopumaan hallituksesta ja
päästämään nuoren kuninkaan sijaansa valtioneuvostoon sekä että
Kustaa Aadolf'ia houkuteltaisiin tässä tarkoituksessa kirjoittamaan
kirje Venäjän keisarinnalle kuin myöskin kehoituskirje Taalain
rahvaalle; ja että oli todistettu neiti Rudenschöld'in näiden
hankkeiden johdosta neuvotelleen venäläisen lähettilään kanssa,
sekä niiden menestymiseksi levitelleen vääriä huhuja ja mielipiteitä