[Editors’ Note: This short note concerns the most recent acquittals in the Mannesmann criminal trial against former Mannesmann CEO, Klaus Esser; Deutsche Bank's CEO (Vorstandssprecher) and then Member of Mannesmann's supervisory board, Josef Ackermann, and other members of the Supervisory Board. The Landgericht [Regional Court] Düsseldorf acquitted all six defendants on 22 July 2004, and this timely note provides but for a first rendition of the circumstances, the reactions and the thrust of the judgment. For more extensive background to the criminal proceedings against Esser, Ackermann et al. and the importance that domestic and international observers have regularly been assigning to this case in the context of a worldwide corporate governance debate, see already Peter Kolla's article in the 1 July 2004 Issue of German Law Journal. German Law Journal will publish a more extensive case commentary in the coming months. Meanwhile, the Mannesmann proceedings have, once more, highlighted to German, European and International observers the particular features of law and politics in “Germany Inc.”, “Rhenish Capitalism”, or “Rhineland Capitalism”. As begun in the aftermath of Josef Ackermann's inthronization at the head of Deutsche Bank and Ackermann's subsequent transformation of the Board's control structure, German Law Journal has published several contributions to the ongoing changes in German corporate governance and its embeddedness within the specific German economic and legal system. In this issue, we are publishing a fine piece by Jürgen Hoffmann, Professor of Sociology in Hamburg, on the current interdisciplinary debate over the future fate of so-called Rhineland Capitalism. In the next issue, to be published on 1 September 2004, Professor Christopher Allen of the University of Georgia will further deepen this inquiry and place the contemporary debate over the possible end of Rhineland capitalism in the historical context of Germany's development in the 20th Century. The Editors of German Law Journal are very pleased and honored to be able to provide for a further forum for this important debate, bringing together lawyers, economists, political scientists and sociologists, for a much needed exploration of the historical and political origins as well as of the legal framework of Germany's much critizised and, at the same time, ardently praised system of corporate governance and industrial relations. We invite our readers to contribute to this debate, which has so far found too little resonance in Germany itself. The Editors.]