As the Bundestag (German Parliament) has finally achieved the sought-after Rechtssicherheit (legal certainty) with respect to ending the threat of foreign claims being brought against German corporations, and as the first compensation payments have been made, the alarm over restitution for National Socialist forced labor seems to have quieted itself. At least, public discussion and media coverage has grown silent on the issue. Since The end of Judge Kram's recent “revolt” seems to have signaled the end of the forced labor issue. Well, our attention is limited. Had it not been a long and winding and somewhat tiring road marked by lawyers having it out with other lawyers? And had there not been enough confusing and embarrassing fits and starts, all that turbulence along the way? Now that the first claims are being paid, apparently there is not much to theorize about. While this is likely not true about the legal element of the matter, this article argues that it is also not true for theorizing about the issue. Instead, legal theory could primarily look at forced labor compensation as a highly rewarding piece of scientific research. This concerns not only the compensation process itself, but certain striking aspects of the public perception expressed in the discussion surrounding the compensation-process.

On 17 September 2001, the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) handed down a landmark decision regarding liability within corporate groups (“Konzernhaftung”) which is likely to give an entirely new direction to the law in this field. Most notably, the Court held that, in spite of the fact that the case concerned a by now classical example of a corporate “daughter” incurring serious financial losses due to management decisions taken by its corporate “mother”, resulting in the erosion of the daughter's financial basis, the Court exclaimed the statutory as well as judge made law regarding corporate liability within corporate groups as not applicable in this case. Thus casting somewhat aside a great and complex bulk of company law in form of a rather ambiguous and quite eruptively evolving law of corporate liability within corporate groups, the Court held that tort law and criminal law would be applicable to the case in point. Paradoxically, it is the Court's apparent shifting away from corporate group liability that might allow for a clearer view on the applicable company law in an area that has, for a long time, been dominated by heated debates about the Court's ambitious interpretation of the relevant norms, their reach and concrete application.

The parliamentary control of executive power in foreign affairs in Germany suffered two severe blows last November; one may wonder whether it will ever recover. First, on 16 November 2001, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder transformed one of the most important foreign policy debates in the Bundestag (Parliament) into a more general policy debate by combining the decision regarding the provision of German troops to the American-led, so-called “War on Terrorism” in Afghanistan with a vote of confidence with respect to his government, pursuant to Article 68 of the Grundgesetz (GG – Basic Law). With the fate of the Red/Green coalition government hinging on the vote, and the very existence of the Green Party at stake, it was not surprising that Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Greens), in his speech on the issue, took a tone more suited for a party convention than for a foreign and security policy debate. And although deploring that posture, most of the opposition speakers followed suit. It was a sad day for German parliamentary democracy. The failure of the Bundestag to live up to its responsibilities is even more apparent in the declarations that accompanied the vote, which show that a considerable number of members of the Bundestag voted for the government in spite of their continuing opposition to the provision of Bundeswehr (German Army) forces, the very conjunction rendered impossible by the use of Article 68. The use of this Article both quashed the existing strong parliamentary backing for the provision of German troops to the anti-terrorism effort in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and denied the Bundestag, and the German public, a serious debate about the first German military operation outside Europe since World War II, excepting the humanitarian contributions to UN missions in Cambodia, East Timor and Somalia.

11 September 2001 had many effects on many spheres of our lives. One of these effects was used to great personal effect by Ronald Barnabas Schill, a criminal law judge at the Hamburg Landgericht (Regional Court). In July, 2000, he founded an eponymous political party, the “Schill-Partei,” to run for the Senate of Bundesland (Federal State) Hamburg in the elections of 23 September 2001. His party, essentially, has a one -issue platform: public safety. Having the highest crime rate of all German cities, this topic is very important in Hamburg. Schill's party fills a gap in the political market in Hamburg and polled 10% in surveys leading up to the September election. Certainly, some of these votes can be accounted for as protest votes, aiming more for political change in the city-state's politics than serving as a ringing endorsement of Schill. Schill seems to have especially benefited from the events of 11 September. Schill, well known as “Judge Merciless,” was able to hit the nerves of the voters by playing on their fear and the shock, particularly spinning the fact that two of the terrorists had lived in Hamburg. The nickname “Judge merciless” had been created by the press because of Schill's rigorous execution of the law and his often outlandish behavior towards the accused and spectators at his trials over which he presided. He is identified with “law and order” or zero tolerance politics Schill focused the last weeks of his campaign on claims that their city had become a nest of terrorism; now more than ever, offering his strict brand of politics emphasizing public safety as the answer. This campaign strategy seems to have been successful, increasing Schill's vote in the election to 20% and guaranteeing that his party a share in the new government along with the State Senator of the Interior position for Schill. In spite of this success, Schill was recently indicted for the crime of perversion of justice pursuant to § 339 Strafgesetzbuch (StGB — German Criminal Code).

The European Commission's White Paper on European Governance has attracted numerous critical comments. Some scholars seem to suggest that the whole project was over ambitious and doomed to failure from the outset, since the Commission could not complete the project without calling into question its own functional self understanding. Broadly speaking, most of the comments in the White Paper draw attention to the neglect of what is considered the European Union's core problem, that is the presumed lack of democratic legitimacy.