In March 2025, Dr. Ian Marder (Associate Professor in Criminology, Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology) published a new article in collaboration with Prof. Mart Susi (Professor of Human Rights Law, Tallinn University School of Governance, Law and Society). The article was inspired by a speech which Mart, the article’s first author, delivered at the European Forum for Restorative Justice biannual conference in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2024.
Entitled, ‘Conceptualising and assessing a human right to access restorative justice in European criminal law’, the article, published in the New Journal of European Criminal Law, draws on conceptual frameworks outlining the criteria by which a proposal for a new human right may be assessed, to consider whether restorative justice can rightfully be welcomed into the human rights family. Mart and Ian analyse the challenges and complexities inherent in the definition and practice of restorative justice to conceptualise it as a human right, before using work by Susi, Alston and others to consider whether restorative justice meets the qualitative criteria for a human right, whether it can be said to derive from existing human rights, and how it can be conceptualised in a sufficiently universal and abstract way to be incorporated into European criminal law as a human right.
You can access the article here. Ian also teaches restorative justice on the MA in Comparative Criminology and Criminal Justice, more information on which can be found here.