Hello! I am a postdoctoral researcher (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) at the philosophy department of Freie Universität Berlin. Before that, I was visiting professor (Vertretungsprofessorin) at Humboldt-Universität and Universität Hamburg.

I teach mainly in political & moral philosophy and practical ethics. Current themes in my work are relational egalitarianism, emerging technologies, animal justice, (human) rights, political legitimacy, punishment, and international criminal justice.

I am an affiliate researcher in philosophy at ANU’s Machine Intelligence and Normative Theory (MINT) Lab. I also co-edit the Zeitschrift für philosophische Literatur, a peer-reviewed open access online journal specializing in german-language reviews of academic philosophy books.

You can contact me via luise.mueller (at) fu-berlin.de.

Research

I'm currently working on the question whether social asymmetries are compatible with the moral and democratic equality between persons. Which ones are compatible, and which ones do we judge morally problematic - and why? Connected to that, I am interested in the role of emerging technologies within those social asymmetries: How and when does technology exacerbate them? Under what circumstances can we use technology to alleviate problematic social asymmetries?

I have also written on questions of legitimacy, political authority, and punishment. In my book with the title ‘The Right to Punish’ (2024, Cambridge University Press), I develop an argument for the political authority of the International Criminal Court. In short, I argue that international institutions that punish massive human rights violations possess legitimate authority in virtue of their capacity to deter future crimes. However, because there can be disagreement about how to achieve this end, courts must - to a certain extent - include democratic elements into their institutional structure.

Publications

monograph

The Right to Punish. Political Authority and International Criminal Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2024)

articles and book chapters 

Punishment, Philosophy of International (Criminal) Justice, in: Sellers, M. & Kirste, S. (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (2023), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_1028-1

Domesticating Artificial Intelligence, in: Moral Philosophy & Politics, Vo. 9, No. 2, 219–237 (2022)*

Which practice? Rescuing the Practical Conception of Human Rights, in: Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 25, No. 1, 128–142 (2022)*

Gerechtigkeit ohne moralische Gleichheit? Rawls und die Herausforderung asymmetrischer Gerechtigkeitsbeziehungen, in: Zeitschrift für praktische Philosophie, Bd. 8, Nr. 2, 117-142 (2021)* pdf

Das Samariter-Prinzip. Warum der Staat in der Not zwingen darf, in: Keil, Geert & Jaster, Romy (Eds), Nachdenken über Corona, Reclam (2021) preprint

Gerechtigkeit für Tiere? Soziale Kooperation und basale Rechte, in: TIERethik, Vol. 21, 29-54 (2020)

Tianxia, Stabilität, und die Bedingungen der Kooperation, in: Zeitschrift für Praktische Philosophie, Bd. 7, No. 1, 363-367 (2020)* pdf

Universal Concern, Contingency, and the Single Practice Assumption: Sangiovanni's Theory of Human Rights, with J. Haaf, in: European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 19, No. 3, 426-432 (2020)*

International Crimes and the Right to Punish, in: Ratio Juris, Vol. 32, No. 3, 301-319 (2019)*

Universal Jurisdiction, Torturers, and Vigilantes, in: Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 22, No. 4, 390-411 (2019)* 

Interstellare Gerechtigkeit — Star Trek's Ideal einer speziespluralistischen Gesellschaft, in: Kanzler, Katja/ Schwarke, Christian (eds): Weitersehen — Visionen für die Gegenwart, Springer (2019)

Soziale Kooperation und die Geltung von Grundrechtsansprüchen, in: Kipker/ Kopp/ Wiersbinski/ Marschelke/ Hamann/ Weichold (eds): Der normative Druck des Faktischen, Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, Beiheft Nr. 156 (2019)

Rawls's Relational Conception of Human Rights, in: Maliks, Reidar/Schaffer, Johan (eds), Moral and Political Conceptions of Human Rights: Implications for Theory and Practice, Cambridge University Press (2017)* 

(* peer-reviewed)

book reviews, working paper, and other publications

Zu den Erfolgsbedingungen von Rechtfertigungen, on: prae|faktisch Philosophie Blog link (10.11.2020)

Just Artificial Intelligence?, in: SOCAI Research Paper Series, Research Paper No. 2 (2020) pdf

Conflict Prevention and the Legitimacy of Governance Actors, in: Collaborative Research Centre 700 Working Paper Series, Working Paper No. 72 (2017)* (with K. Eickhoff) pdf

Christine Bratu: Die Grenzen staatlicher Legitimität, in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Literatur, Vol. 5, No. 1, 11-18 (2016)* pdf

Ingo Venzke/Armin von Bogdandy: In Wessen Namen? Internationale Gerichte in Zeiten globalen Regierens, in: Zeitschrift für Menschenrechte, No. 2 (2016)*

Comment on Niesen, Ahlhaus & Patberg (2016), Konstituierende Autorität. Ein Grundbegriff für die internationale politische Theorie, on: theorieblog.de link (29.4.2016, in cooperation with Zeitschrift für politische Theorie, with a reply by the authors)

(* peer-reviewed)

Teaching

Here are some of my recent courses I’ve been teaching in Hamburg and Berlin:

I co-edit the Zeitschrift für philosophische Literatur. We publish german-language reviews of recent academic philosophy books. The ZfphL is open-access and its reviews are peer-reviewed and available online. If you would like your book featured on our books for review list or if you're interested in becoming an author, get in touch!