Summary

The article is a continuation of the discussion based on punishment initiated by Associate Professor Anneli Soo (Juridica 2022/3). The author begins with a few cursory critical remarks on the article in question by Anneli Soo, and then moves critically into paths that Anneli Soo herself has not, at least so far, explored in her article. The main reasoning in the article by Anneli Soo relates to guilt, and there can be nothing in criminal law that is more important and significant than guilt. The author seeks an answer to the questions of whether the arguments that allegedly led to Reinhard Frank’s revolutionary action in 1907 to ‘repress’ the concept of psychological guilt and to replace it with the concept of ‘normative guilt’ are comprehensible and convincing to a neutral outsider even today, and whether the concept of normative guilt has justified the hopes of its more than 100-year existence (i.e. has created a crystal-clear situation in defining the concept of guilt as well as in clarifying the circumstances of the crime more generally) or, at least in Estonia to begin with, there is reason to acknowledge with a smile the misunderstandings that have occurred in the meantime and to start diplomatically considering a return (unless a more suitable and as yet untried third option appears on the horizon).