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About

Nora Markwalder is a pioneering legal scholar whose work confronts one of the most urgent questions in modern criminal law: can—and should—artificial intelligence be held criminally responsible? Her research sits at the intersection of criminal law theory, legal personhood, and emerging technology, challenging traditional doctrines of culpability. Markwalder’s most influential contribution, “Guilty Robots? – Rethinking the Nature of Culpability and Legal Personhood in an Age of Artificial Intelligence” (2018), has garnered 54 citations and sparked an international debate on whether functional concepts of guilt can be extended to non-human actors. In this and related works, she systematically dissects the limits of the human-centric “functional concept of guilt” and argues that as robots become capable of causing harm independently, the law must evolve—either by redefining culpability or by creating new accountability frameworks. Her German-language pieces, including “Roboter in der Verantwortung?” (2017), further explore how robots as instruments of crime already raise pressing questions of legal responsibility. Markwalder’s scholarship is essential reading for anyone grappling with the future of criminal justice in an age of intelligent machines.