Experimental Criminal Law in the V Conference of professors of Criminal Law of the Valencian and Balearic Public University

On March 23, Ana Belén Gómez, expert in empirical legal studies in Plus Ethics and Assistant Professor at Miguel Hernández University, participated in the V Conference of professors of criminal law of the Valencian and Balearic Public University, held at the Sa Riera Building of the University of the Balearic Islands. With the participation of specialists of the highest level, in its fifth edition, these days have already been consolidated as one of the most important appointments for criminal law, not only of the Valencian and Balearic communities, but at national level.

The Plus Ethics researcher presented the results of a recent legal experimental study that she has developed together with Prof. Dr. Fernando Miró Llinares within the NEXO national project about one of the emerging debates in criminal law about whether the penal system should integrate the intuitions of justice of the community. With the suggestive title “Do jurists have privileged access to the meaning of justice?”, and with a sample of 659 participants, the objective of this study has been, on the one hand, to analyze different intuitions of justice related to the different attempts and the consummation of homicide, as well as assessing whether the training in law modulates these intuitions. The results that have been collected indicate that the lay participants graduate both the criminal responsibility and the formal sanction in a non-random way and that special knowledge in Law has no relevance in the intuitive distribution of these variables.