Passing of Professor Dr. Mireille Delmas-Marty (1941-2022)
It is with deep sadness that I share with you the passing of Professor Dr. Mireille Delmas-Marty (1941-2022). Her legacy is enormous, as she has not only been a leading expert in the areas of economic criminal law, comparative criminal procedure and human rights, European criminal law and International criminal law, but also because of her highly innovative legal research. Titles of her impressive list of publications, translated in many languages, as « Le flou du droit », « Vers un droit commun de l’humanité », « Punir sans juger », « Quand l’Europe raisonne la raison d’État », « Droits de l’homme et systèmes de droit » et « Les forces imaginantes du droit » do reflect that she is much more than a leading scholar in criminal law. Her passionate interest in the interconnectivity of norms in a pluralist legal order and the humanistic values on which they should be founded were for her the driving force to combine legal theory, human rights, comparative law and criminal justice. Prof. Mireille Delmas-Marty was also very much engaged in legal reforms of the Constitution, criminal code and code of criminal procedure in France. For here excellence she has received many awards, including eight doctorate honoris causa and membership of several Academies of Science.
* Picture Simone Pierini, Saint Germain Laval 2021
Mireille Delmas-Marty has been very active in the AIDP. In 1984 she was elected member of the Board of Directors; she also has been member of the Scientific Committee and member of the Comité de Patronage of the Revue de Droit Pénal International. From 1984 to 1989 (year of the XIVth AIDP Congress in Wien) she was general rapporteur for Section I on the “legal and practical problems posed by the differences between criminal law and administrative criminal law”. Thanks to her commitment she was elected vice-president of the AIDP in 1989 and became honorary vice-president in 2009. She was also awarded the first MPI-AIDP Jescheck prize in 2009.
We will all remember Mireille Delmas-Marty as an excellent colleague convinced of the importance of a humanistic criminal justice system based on universal human rights and values. Her legacy is an unvaluable source for our future work in the AIDP.
Prof. Dr. John Vervaele, President of AIDP