As the last straw, a question: where does it (From Apology to Utopia) lead us to, what are we to make of and with it (international law)? The author himself hints at an answer in the very last sentence of the Epilogue, which marks the difference between the original and this new edition of From Apology to Utopia (FATU), by pointing to his second Hauptwerk, the seminal Gentle Civilizer of Nations and the story about international lawyers it tells. Indeed, the last paragraph of FATU thereby becomes a sort of epi-epilogue, an interpretive afterthought on Gentle Civilizer, written after the original FATU, within the afterthought of FATU's new edition, written after Gentle Civilizer. The latter is taken to illustrate the consequences of FATU for both individual practitioner and academic lawyers, notably the continuous double bind between law and politics inherent in the structure of international law. That double bind demands, according to Koskenniemi, at once coolness and passion, that is, as he concludes, “a full mastery of the grammar and a sensitivity to the uses to which it is put.” This, of course, alludes once again to the twofold intent that inspires FATU: to disinter with archeological precision the grammatical structure of international law and to thereby enable its critique, or, as the author puts it in the Epilogue, to join a descriptive with a normative project. The double-edged argument that has resulted from this combination has uniquely captured the letter and spirit of international legal practice and has mesmerized the international legal profession ever since it first appeared in 1989. Together with Gentle Civilizer, it has justly made its author into one of the iconic figures of international legal theory of the intellectual fin-de-siècle of the outgoing twentieth and the incoming twenty-first century. Yet, for all the echoes FATU has been occasioning in virtually all corners of the legal theoretical spectrum, the consequences that flow from it for legal theory and practice have remained somewhat under-explored.

Over the last decade, the admissibility decision-making of the European Court of Human Rights has been the focus of considerable attention in the analysis of the “mounting pressure on the Convention system,” but has enjoyed little critical analysis in legal, sociological or socio-legal literatures. This paper will argue that this combination of intense attention and critical neglect is paradoxical, and has produced fascinating and hitherto largely unnoticed discontinuities and incompatibilities between the rhetorical representation of the Court's admissibility decision-making in ongoing Convention reform debates and the published jurisprudence of the Court on those standards of admissibility.

In a pluralistic society, agreement over complex issues is frequently difficult to achieve. This is amply demonstrated by the question of cultivation of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), where scientific uncertainty relating to potential threats to the environment or human health runs parallel with concerns over ethics, freedom of choice, and competing agricultural and economic interests. Conflict centres over the objective of free trade of GMOs and the circumstances in which restrictions may legitimately be imposed to deal with the abovementioned concerns, in particular regarding cultivation.

The comparative constitutional analysis of federalism is particularly complex. On the one hand, “[e]ach federal bargain is in important respects unique to the parties' situation,” in contrast to constitutional provisions asserted to guarantee fundamental rights. On the other hand, “provisions concerning federalism may have different historical meanings in a particular polity, tied in different ways to the political compromises.” In addition, the federal system relies on an “interrelated package of arrangements.” Therefore, no element should be considered isolated from other elements of the federal compromise. As a consequence, in order to compare federalism issues it may be necessary to evaluate “the entire interrelated structure.”

The United States and other nations have taken numerous military, police and intelligence measures in order to counter terrorists’ threats in response to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Virginia as well as the attempted attack on a target in Washington, D. C.

Many of the ills afflicting democratic capitalism have their source in the current legal architecture of money and finance. At the same time the reimagination of institutions of money and finance promise an avenue for reform to democratize the economy and prevent the perpetuation of austerity politics. Such institutional reimagination requires a perspective that recognizes money as an institution linking state and civil society, politics and the economy. Economics in great part eschews such a perspective and perceives of money as a medium of exchange largely independent of government and politics. Legal analysis, by contrast, should be ideally suited for the endeavor to analyse the various ways in which the institutional design of money configures political economy.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has been considering whether same-sex couples should have the rights to marry and to be recognized as a family under the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) for over thirty years. In the 1980s the European Commission of Human Rights (the Commission) and the ECtHR respectively rejected the notion that same-sex relationships constituted a “family life” under Article 8 of the ECHR, and that post-operative transgendered persons had the right to marry under Article 12. However, throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium, the ECtHR handed down a body of judgments that incrementally liberalized these rights (albeit not always smoothly) in favor of LGBT persons. This evolution culminated in part on 24 June 2010, when the ECtHR passed judgment in Schalk and Kopf v. Austria. In that case the First Section of the ECtHR made a number of major, but seemingly contradictory rulings. For the first time in its history, the ECtHR ruled that same-sex relationships expressly constitute a “family life” under Article 8, and that the right to marry under Article 12 was not confined to opposite-sex couples in “all circumstances.” However, the ECtHR simultaneously ruled that Member States are under no obligation to protect that “family life,” by providing same-sex couples with access to marriage under Article 12, or an alternative registration system under Articles 8 and 14. The Grand Chamber denied the applicants' subsequent request for a referral.

Recently, scholars have argued of the necessity of going beyond “judicial dialogues” and “conflict-and-power” approaches to the analysis of the role of national Constitutional Courts in the Union. On the one hand, there are risks connected to a “too welcoming an approach by national constitutional courts to EU law”; on the other hand, it is possible to criticize both the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) and some national Constitutional Courts for other, less cooperative, decisions. I share this cautious approach for many reasons, and primarily because the preliminary ruling mechanism does not exhaust all the possible means of communication between constitutional courts and the CJEU. For instance, what Komárek calls “parallel references” can serve, in some circumstances, as a technique of alternative (or hidden) dialogue, that has favored a sort of “remote dialogue” over the years. My sole point of disagreement with this scholarly position is over the role of conflicts in this scenario. Whilst Komárek seems to confine conflicts to phenomena of mere resistance or to “‘cold’ strategic considerations,” in this work I am going to adopt a much broader idea of conflict, which goes beyond mere “conflicts and power games.”

The process of norm evolution and development in international law has been highly debated in recent international law and international relations scholarship. However, the debate focuses primarily on states or non-state actors as the agents responsible for shaping international law. In contrast, the role of the judiciary is often neglected in the debate. It is an open secret, though, that courts are not merely Montesquieu's bouche de la loi, impartial arbiters, who apply and interpret exogenous norms. Armin von Bogdandy and Ingo Venzke have already pointed out that decisions for concrete cases can hardly be derived from abstract legal concepts by the mere exercise of logical deduction. Instead, the application of legal provisions often involves the development of the applied norm itself. This not only applies in the domestic setting, but is also valid in the international arena. This contribution will deal specifically with lawmaking by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In the 1970s and 80s, the philosophical works of Jacques Derrida became known well beyond the borders of France and beyond the limits of the French language. It was a radical and disturbing new form of materialism which made Derrida's thought so notorious: a philosophy of writing, of différance, of the movements of negation which always escape our grasp – with the effect that all theoretical trust in the idea of “presence” is undermined. Derrida develops his thought relentlessly on the border between form and content. It could be said that he balances on this border. And he conceives these diverse, experimental balancing acts, which are portrayed as readings of other texts, as a procedure in its own right – a procedure, called “deconstruction”, which has a distinctly irritating effect on the reader.

This article will evaluate whether, and to what extent, preventive measures in the fight against money laundering may limit fundamental freedoms and human rights within the European Union (“EU”). It will analyze two judgments rendered by the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) and one judgment rendered by the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”). In these three cases, the courts were asked to investigate the compatibility of specific Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) preventive measures with the freedom to provide services enshrined in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“TFEU”) and human rights. Considering the gravity of the phenomenon, AML measures have gradually emerged as a “European general interest.” The Fourth EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive, which has been recently adopted, displays this compelling need.

During the last decade, there has been a widespread trend in Germany and internationally away from litigation towards Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) procedures. In recent years, the German interest has especially focused on mediation as a means of dispute resolution. The year 2000 saw the introduction of a federal mediation law that permits all German states (“Länder”) to launch mandatory court-connected mediation with respect to certain kinds of civil disputes. However, mediation is still in its infancy in Germany. Thus, it could be helpful for the purpose of improving the German system to look to other jurisdictions that have mature mediation systems.

According to Regulation 1049/2001, which creates the EU’s public access to documents regime, all EU documents should hypothetically be publicly accessible, except for those that fall within explicitly protected interests. A number of these exceptions to disclosure, however, function such that documents covered by them do not have to be disclosed if their release would harm a protected interest unless there is an “overriding public interest in disclosure” exists in the circumstances. The purpose of this Article is to offer a critical examination of this concept of the overriding public interest as interpreted by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). In the first part, the notion of the public interest generally is discussed from a theoretical perspective. Following this, a thorough analysis of case law concerning the overriding public interest is presented. Finally, this Article presents a critical commentary of the CJEU’s understanding of the concept. This Article essentially seeks to argue, inter alia, that the CJEU’s interpretation has resulted in democratically unaccountable bureaucrats of the EU effectively becoming the sole arbiters of the existence and content of the overriding public interest in disclosure under Regulation 1049/2001, a situation that is fundamentally unsatisfactory.

It is by now common knowledge that British colonialism in India transformed or invented many Indian institutions and traditions. Questions of how the transformation occurred, of the extent of Indians’ participation in the changes, and of how to measure the scope of the transformation are all still very much in scholarly debate. The area of law has recently become a productive intellectual site for historians interested in describing the transformative effects of colonial governance. Few of these studies, however, are informed by more than a superficial knowledge of classical and medieval legal traditions in India.

The one-sided focus on shareholders’ interests inherent in shareholder value-orientated corporate policies presupposes that there is a functioning system to protect the economic interests of the other stakeholder groups (creditors, employees, customers, suppliers, etc.). This is an important constraint on the maximization of the market value of equity, which as a target variable cannot be equated with a market price on the stock exchange, or with a short-term profit or yield target, and certainly not with a pending bonus payment sum. Conversely, the postulation that the primary focus must be on shareholders’ interests loses its validity as a guiding operational principle if neither individual contractual agreements nor protective statutory rules can safeguard a minimum level of protection for individual stakeholder groups. Given the incompleteness of contracts, it is not sufficient to refer to the possibility of self-protection in contracts—this loophole must be closed by regulations and by corporate governance.