View article

German criminal law theory enjoys widespread influence in the civil law world. Its impact extends from European countries like Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, and Sweden, to Israel and the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries of Latin America, as well as to Asian countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. 1 By contrast, criminal law in common law countries has, until fairly recently, developed largely independent of German influence. Since the completion of the Model Penal Code in 1962, however, interest in German criminal law theory among Anglo-American criminal law scholars has grown steadily. 2 George Fletcher's Rethinking Criminal Law, in particular, has been remarkably successful in intro-