Attila Tanyi

From

University of Milan - IT

In residence at

Institute of Interdisciplinary Law Research (IRJI) / University of Tours - FR

Host scientist

Nicolas Jeanne

BIOGRAPHY

Attila Tanyi is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Milan and adjunct professor of philosophy at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Previously, he served as lecturer and professor at the universities of Liverpool, Stockholm, Konstanz and Bayreuth. A trained economist and political scientist, he received his doctorate from the Department of Political Science at the Central European University (CEU) in 2007. He has published over 60 articles and several books on the philosophy of law, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and on various topics in moral and political philosophy. He has held numerous research fellowships, visiting professorships and led externally funded projects. In the 2022-23 academic year he was a fellow at CEU IAS, Budapest, Hungary and in the 2023-24 academic year he was head of a research group at the Center for Advanced Study (CAS) in Oslo, Norway. He was also a non-resident senior research fellow at the Corvinus Institute of Advanced Study (CIAS) at Corvinus University of Budapest that same year. He is a regular member of the Norwegian National Committee for Clinical Trials of Medicines and Medical (REK-KULMU. At the same time, he is, together with Daniel Hill (Liverpool) a co-investigator of a Leverhulme Trust grant led by Stephen McLeod (Liverpool) on the law and ethics of entrapment.

Further information can be found at his website: www.attilatanyi.com

The law and ethics of entrapment: definition, evaluation, implications

If undercover police incite someone to break the law, to make an arrest, this is state entrapment. If a private citizen incites someone to break the law, to report them, we have private entrapment. State entrapment usually compromises prosecution. Private entrapment usually does not. The police and the courts respond to it in disparate, unpredictable ways.
The project is primarily interested in state entrapment; private entrapment is of secondary interest. The focus will be on three questions: definition; permissibility; implications.
Definition. What is entrapment? When entrapment happens, one party, the ‘agent’, intentionally brings it about that another, the ‘target’, performs a forbidden act. What else makes an act one of entrapment? The project will investigate this question in detail.
Permissibility. The courts and scholars have proposed many objections to legal entrapment. Correspondingly, there is widespread consensus that if entrapment is permissible then it is a method of last resort. The grounds for this view, however, are uncertain. The project will scrutinize these grounds.
Implications. In the US, but not elsewhere, legal entrapment is held to nullify culpability. Is this correct? Why or why not? What are entrapment’s normative implications for justice and for practical ethics? The project will answer these questions within and across jurisdictions.
Rather than stemming from innocuous conventional differences, disagreements about entrapment are at heart philosophical conflicts. Philosophy has a key role to play in deepening our understanding of the assumptions that underlie debates about entrapment, the concept of entrapment, and the ethics of entrapment. This project will be the first sustained, comprehensive, and specifically philosophical study of the topic. It will bring new clarity, depth, and sophistication to the discussion of entrapment.