Open AccessNon-criminal murders: A sociological essay about the use of self-defence in Argentina
Author(s) -
Martina Lassalle
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
oñati socio-legal series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2079-5971
DOI - 10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1224
Subject(s) - hegemony , criminal justice , property (philosophy) , criminology , private property , value (mathematics) , sociology , law , criminal law , economic justice , political science , character (mathematics) , politics , philosophy , epistemology , geometry , mathematics , machine learning , computer science
This article seeks to examine the use of the figure of self-defence in the practices of the Buenos Aires criminal justice system. As we will show with the analysis of some paradigmatic cases, through the use of this exceptional figure, this criminal justice system produces certain murders as non-criminal acts to, paradoxically, safeguard individual life as a hegemonic value. Moreover, we will observe that the use of this legal figure reveals that killings to protect private property may not have a criminal character either. This in turn suggests that private property is also a hegemonic value for this criminal justice system, and that the allegedly supremacy of individual life over private property in its value scale should be at least questioned.