In addition to the determination of the research questions, the concentration and coordination of the projects conducted are of decisive importance for the implementation of the research program. The projects are selected so that their findings transcend the sum of the results of the individual studies in order to achieve an added value for a comprehensive theory of the territorial and functional limits of criminal law and of comparative criminal law.
Synergy effects result primarily due to the fact that the research projects concentrate on selected research fields in which the research questions discussed above are particularly evident.
- For the construction of a theory of the territorial limits of criminal law and criminal law integration, primarily those legal systems are studied that integrate various national criminal justice systems and in so doing create a transnational, enforceable criminal law. The projects on the territorial limits of criminal law thus frequently address the research fields "European Criminal Law" and "international criminal law." However, rules of other international organizations, such as the OECD, that are relevant to the criminal law are also included in individual cases.
- For the construction of a theory of the functional limits of criminal law, topics whose complexity exceeds the scope of traditional criminal law are of interest. These problems often arise in the context of the research fields "terrorism," "organized crime," "white-collar crime," "Internet crime," and "criminal law control of the life sciences." The selection of the offense category is made a function of the overriding research issue so that in a study of organized crime, for example, international criminal offenses and state-supported crime as well as other forms of complex crime can also (depending upon the issues under study) be included.
In contrast, for the construction of a theory of comparative criminal law, it is the selection of the same topics in legal systems that are especially disparate in space, time, policy, and culture or in similar legal systems that alone is decisive. The projects frequently address – intentionally – several research fields and profit thereby in diverse ways from the results of other studies.