Clara Martner Sota
Clara Martner Sota is a DPhil Candidate in Law at Balliol College, University of Oxford. Her research explores the relationship between discrimination and criminal law, examining the distinctive wrongfulness of hate crime and the ways in which discriminatory conduct can deny victims their equal standing.
- What is the title of your research, and what is it about?
My research is titled Justifying Hate Crimes. It sits at the intersection of jurisprudence and criminal law and develops a “discrimination account” of the wrongfulness of hate crime. On this account, what makes hate crimes distinctively wrong is that they express an evaluative judgment that denies the victim’s equal standing.
- Who is your supervisor?
Professor James Edwards.
- How did you come up with your research topic?
During my LL.M., I attended a seminar on discrimination and became interested in the contemporary philosophical and legal literature on the subject. As a Chilean national, I was also aware that hate crime legislation has existed in Chile since 2012, femicide legislation since 2010, and legislation addressing structural femicide since 2020, making these issues particularly salient in my country of origin. As I explored the subject further, I became increasingly aware that the theoretical foundations of hate crime remained comparatively underdeveloped, both in the academic literature and in legislative and jurisprudential approaches. This combination made the topic both pressing and underexplored.
- Why did you choose Oxford to undertake research in Criminal Law?
The opportunity to work with James Edwards was a particularly important factor, as his work in the philosophy of criminal law aligns closely with my research interests. Oxford also has an exceptionally strong tradition in jurisprudence, and I have found here a vibrant community of academics and students working across both jurisprudence and criminal law.
- How do you hope your research will contribute to law and society?
I hope my research will help clarify what, exactly, societies seek to punish when they criminalise discriminatory hate. By identifying the distinctive wrong involved in hate crime, I hope to provide a clearer basis for determining which forms of discriminatory conduct ought to be criminalised and how they ought to be punished. More broadly, I hope the research can contribute to ongoing debates about the proper scope and justification of hate crime legislation.