UNE Business School Seminar Series

12pm- 1pm, Wednesday 24 September

LT2, W40, Economics, Business and Law

Sentencing and Judicial Discretion in an Authoritarian State: Evidence from Pre-war Nazi Germany

Presented by

Professor Russell Smyth, Head of Department of Economics, Monash University

Abstract

This article examines the impact of judicial discretion on sentencing within the hitherto unexplored context of an authoritarian regime. It takes as its focus individuals convicted of acts of high treason or treason committed in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939. It finds that, notwithstanding the political nature of these trials, Nazi judges not only exhibited considerable discretion but, like counterparts in other jurisdictions since, handed down sentences based in part on the individual characteristics, backgrounds, affiliations and experiences of the convicted. When it promotes court effectiveness and regime legitimacy, a modicum of judicial autonomy can sit side by side with dictatorship.

Professor Russell Smyth

Russell Smyth is Professor of Economics. His research interests encompass Asian economies, Chinese economic reform, empirical legal studies, law and economics, migration and applied time series econometrics.  From 1998 to 2008 he was Editor of Economic Papers, the policy journal of the Economic Society of Australia and was a member of the Central Council of the Economic Society of Australia. In 2008 he received the Honorary Fellow Award of the Economic Society of Australia. He is currently an Associate Editor of the B.E. Press journal, Asia Pacific Law and Economics Review and Pacific Economic Review and sits on the Editorial Board of a further four journals.