This article looks at the reasons for the lack of a discussion on “network oriented” media and internet law. The Internet has fundamentally changed the conditions of communication. It has broken down or undermined all borders between formats, individual and mass communication, communication content, and technologies of telecommunication. As a “network of networks,” it is also a challenge for the legal system which has linked its conceptions and doctrine to those separations and borderlines.

On the 30 June 2009 the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, FCC) has passed its long-awaited decision on the compatibility of the Act approving the Treaty of Lisbon and the accompanying legislation with the Basic law (Grundgesetz). The FCC's decision according to which the ratification law is compatible with the Basic law was greeted with relief by many German and European policy makers. It has removed another obstacle for the adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon in the European Union (EU), which still has to be ratified by Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic, though. But also Germany's ratification still depends on the amendment of the accompanying “Act Extending and Strengthening the Rights of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat in European Union Matters” (“Extending Act”) which the FCC has declared incompatible with the Basic law insofar as the legislature, Bundestag and Bundesrat, have not been accorded sufficient rights of participation in European law-making and treaty amendment procedures. The FCC has therefore ruled that the Federal Republic of Germany's instrument of ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon may not be deposited as long as the constitutionally required legal elaboration of the parliamentary rights of participation has not entered into force. This puts pressure on German law-makers to amend the accompanying “Extending Act” possibly before the referendum in Ireland and before German elections in autumn 2009.

The purpose of this essay is to consider the significance of new developmentalism for the field of law and development. New developmentalism refers to a theory and practice of development economics, which appears to have entered mainstream development thinking. Its core elements also seem to have been a factor in the dynamic economic growth that has occurred in a number of emerging economies. This trend is significant for the field of law and development because: (a) conventional economic development orthodoxies are seen to have shaped previous law and development movements; (b) these models and their corresponding law reform projects were arguably inadequately adapted to existing domestic circumstances; and (c) new developmentalism represents a departure from conventional development orthodoxies, as it necessitates both learning and adapting to local settings. Yet such a system also creates new challenges for law reformers and policymakers within the international development community (not to mention domestic reformers), and it remains unclear (if not doubtful) that new developmental states can be engineered by external actors and institutions.

The term “inquisition” has had bad press for a long time. Comparably bad is the reputation of the inquisitorial system, a judicial model that dominated German criminal law enforcement until the beginning of the 19th century. A distinctive feature of inquisitorial proceedings is the eminently strong position of the inquisitor who unifies the functions of an investigator, a prosecutor, and a judge in one and the same person. Although the codes of criminal procedure in the German states – which in 1871 formed the Kaiserreich (German Empire of 1871-1918)– included detailed rules of evidence to prevent arbitrary investigations, at the beginning of the 19th century it was a common opinion that these control mechanisms were practically insufficient and that the inquisitorial system ought to be replaced by a judicial model, which would guarantee more effective protection of the defendant against unjustified conviction.

Networks have been discussed extensively in different ways within social and cultural theory as well as in economic scholarship. Author of Network Power, David Singh Grewal, participates in a popular discourse by describing globalization as a series of networks of power in contemporary society. In the same year that his book was published, Grewal writes a response to these theories of a globalized “flat” society in an article for the UK newspaper, The Guardian. Entitled “The World Isn't Flat – It's Networked,” the preface reads: “Globalisation does not 'flatten opportunity in the world: rather it forces everyone to conform to an underlying standard, specifically that of the already privileged nation.” A young scholar, Grewal holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and is currently Ph.D. student at the Department of Government at Harvard University.