Thank you for your interest, Soulforged. I´m not quite sure what you are asking for. I´ll summarize the three forms of intent in German law. I think the English word "intent" is not quite the same as "Vorsatz". Therefore I will use this term instead by now.
dolus directus I
This is the form where the volition of the offender is directed at breaking a criminal law. The action is motivated by the result.
dolus directus II
Here the offender knows for sure that the result of his action will break a criminal law. His interior will is irrelevant, as he obviously has decided to act anyway.
dolus eventualis
The offender thinks that it´s possible/likely that he will break a criminal law. The obvious difficulty is to distinguish this from negligence.
If I drive through a town with 150 km/h and kill another person, is this still negligence or was the likelihood of the accident so high that we have to call it dolus eventualis? There are dozens of opinions about this in scientific literature. I could tell you more, if you want to.
You mentioned Welzel. His merit was that he developed the modern understanding of Vorsatz. This led to the splitting of the "Unrechtsbewusstsein" from the Vorsatz. This means: Vorsatz only has to contain the element of the criminal law. But the knowlegde that there is a specific criminal law (Unrechtsbewusstsein) is not part of Vorsatz. Many professors opposed his idea. However the discussion about this matter ended in the 1970s. The German legislative followed Welzel´s idea. The new § 17 S.2 StGB made clear that Unrechtsbewusstsein only needs to be potentially present.
The example I stated above under Legio´s case No. 8 shows this. B believed that the law didn´t apply to him, but he was punished as a murderer because he could have known it better (=potentielles Unrechtsbewusstsein).
An important consequence is that Vorsatz now belonged to the elements of the offence. Formerly it was considered as a part the guilt. As you may know in German law the test if someone is to be punished, is done in three steps:
1. Tatbestand (elements of the offence)
2. Rechtswidrigkeit (Are there any justifications?)
3. Schuld (I call it guilt, nor sure if it´s correct in English)
In the beginning of the 20. century the elements of the offence were only objective, exterior circumstances. Welzel now introduced the idea that many crimes wouldn´t really make sense that way. Example:
A takes B´s bike and uses it.
Is this a theft? To determine this we have to know what A has in mind when he´s taking the bike. If A wants to keep the bike for himself, it´s a theft. If he wants to return it to B immediately, it´s not a theft. The Tatbestand is meant to decribe the crime itself in a sufficient way. Therefore it is necessary to take the internal circumstances of the offender into account.
In the times before Welzel actions of offenders were only judged in an objective way. The interior attitude of the offender was just a matter of guilt.
This is what Welzel showed.
Well hopefully I was able to express what I wanted to tell![]()
If you want some more info on specific matters, just ask.
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