The European Union takes on a new look. The Constitutional Treaty, which was agreed by the heads of State or Government on 18 June 2004, will, admittedly, not reinvent Europe, but it will establish a new foundation for Europe. It is true that originally the Constitutional Treaty was only supposed to improve Europe's legal bases and to make the European idea and the institutions of the European Union more accessible to the citizens. However, through the concept of a Constitution alone, the Constitutional Treaty has created a vigorous political impulse, and has marked a new level of Europe's identity. The use of the term “Constitution,” however, also gives rise to ideas, hopes and fears that in some cases need to be corrected.

It has been forty years since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) initiated the modernization project of Post-Mao China. As with other sectors, learning from the West was one of the basic strategies taken by the CCP to achieve the modernization of Chinese socialist legality, even as Chinese law is meant to be grounded in the orthodoxies of Marxism-Leninism. In order to learn from the West, the CCP generally adopted an elastic and dualistic approach to reform that is based on the utilitarian incentives of Deng Xiaoping. In the political sector, for example, the CCP looked back into the past and the CCP’s successful experiences under Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The aim was to immunize politics from the influence of western liberal-democratic ideology. But in the economic area, the CCP moved toward the West by vigorously adopting advanced western rules and institutions for managing the economy. This article examines how this strategy formed the basic contours of Chinese socialist legality in the past forty years. The article identifies the resulting internal lacuna, especially with respect to the realization of the “rule of law.” This article also analyses the possible future of a Chinese-socialist rule of law. That possibility will be affected by changing external circumstances, particularly the deterioration of China-US relations.

This Article aims to examine the social media jurisprudence of national courts in a selected set of EU Member States by focusing on judicial dialogue specifically via references to the case law of other courts. Do judges in social media cases engage with the case law of peers, and if so how and to what extent? The analysis investigates whether national judges draw on the jurisprudence of higher domestic courts, foreign courts and/or European supranational courts—the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)—and explores the use of such jurisprudence. It is based on 147 cases from the constitutional and/or supreme courts of Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Although judicial dialogue is generally limited in the cases under study, the analysis illustrates the different ways in which courts interact with the rulings of peers and informs on the latter’s contribution to judicial assessment.

Social media is a dominating force in modern social life as internet technology has taken hold of our cyber-driven society. Many scholars, as will be explored below, have articulated fears and enthusiasm about what can be interpreted as a reconfiguration of privacy in a culture mediated by technology. Scholarship ranges from those opposing new conception of privacy in favour of protecting rights in traditional private/public distinctions with privacy as a privilege worthy of proprietary protection to those reveling in opening floodgates for information to re-invent or even destroy any semblance of traditional distinctions of privacy. These poles become even more accentuated in light of fast-proliferating technology illustrated by popular social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare etc. In the North-American debate, the privacy concerns connected with these developments are compounded further by the U. S. Supreme Court's recent decision, Nelson v. NASA, which involves the constitutional right of government to ask for employee's personal information in the context of national security and surveillance.

In this Article, I suggest considering linkages of a theoretical, and continuities of a sociological nature between on the one hand, the concept and the practical use of socialist legality in Socialist Hungary—with particular regard to the period following the judicial reform of 1954—and on the other hand, the concept of constitutional identity as it has developed in the Fundamental Law in Hungary, with particular regard to the period since the 2011 judicial reform. The Article highlights surprising similarities in the politically determined legislative intention in these two periods to form embracing, quasi legal concepts, which in themselves seem to differ fundamentally, although the similarities in their nature and in the specific constitutional practice are attention-grabbing. The interpretation of the role of state institutions, and especially the judicial role, lead one to think that despite the explicit rejection of the Socialist era in Article U) of the Fundamental Law in Hungary, the new constitutional regime has familiar attitudes to the understanding of the rule of law and the role of the judiciary in promoting the enforcement of the new, supra legal concepts of a transformative nature, which, however, are filled in with the ruling political ideology, whether it be socialist legality or national constitutional identity.

Scholarly consensus sees EU supremacy as “necessarily bidimensional”: the supranational dimension necessarily stands alongside the national dimension, which rejects the absolute and unconditional supremacy of EU law. I argue that this view of bidimensional supremacy is conceptually flawed and descriptively inaccurate. On the conceptual side, I identify the fallacy of symmetry (the idea that national and supranational perspectives on supremacy are similar in nature and equally reductionist), the fallacy of selection (the view that bidimensionalism alone can overcome what it perceives as an inevitable subjective bias in the choice between national and supranational supremacy claims), and the fallacy of construction (an originally shared popular sovereignty theory, which turns out to be riddled with biases that disrupt the equilibrium within the internally divided sovereign). On the interpretative side, I suggest that the empirical evidence in support of bidimensional supremacy is weaker than it is generally assumed. I then offer an interpretation of the PSPP judgment of the German Federal Constitutional Court, which holds a judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union to be ultra vires, unlawful and thus non-binding. PSPP presents a problem of German origins and cast, rather than one stemming from the inner structure of EU constitutionalism. At most, PSPP represents a contingent, rather than necessary, and thus unexceptional instance of bidimensional supremacy.

The traditional narrative of the legal profession has run its course. Lawyers are looking for ethically sensitive ways to practice law that “assume greater responsibility for the welfare of parties other than clients” and that increasingly amount “to a plus for this society and for the world of our children.” Lawyers are also seeking ways to practice law that allow them to get home at night and on weekends, see their families, work full or part-time, practice in diverse and “alternative” settings, and generally pursue a meaningful career in the law rather than necessarily a total life in the law. Similarly, law students are hoping not to be asked to make a “pact with the Devil” as the cost of becoming a lawyer, and are instead looking to find areas in the law that fit with their personal, political, and economic preferences. An increasing number of legal academics are teaching, researching, and writing about progressive changes to the way we view the role and purpose of lawyering. Law faculties are actively reforming their programs and creating centres and initiatives designed to make space for innovative ethics offerings and public interest programs. Law societies and other regulatory bodies are slowly chipping away at some of the time-honoured shields of ethically suspect client behaviour, while at the same time facing demands for increased accountability. The bench and the bar are taking an active interest in addressing a perceived growing lack of professionalism within the practice. The public is increasingly skeptical of the distinction that continues to be drawn between legal ethics and “ordinary standards of moral conduct.” Finally, clients are not only expecting lawyers to actively canvass methods of alternative dispute resolution—the alternative to the adversarial and costly litigation process—but they are also demanding evidence of general sustainable professional practices from their legal counsel.

This Paper investigates legal subjectivity in the European Union. It takes seriously the principle according to which the individual is at the heart of the Union's activities and asks what kind of legal and political subjectivity the EU can render possible. The analysis draws on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and his conception of singular plurality. What comes to the fore is the interrelatedness of subjects and community. This implies that the subject should not be understood simply as an individual, nor as part of a communitarian whole. Neither view is ontologically plausible nor ethically sound. By conceptualizing subjectivity as both singular and plural, it may become possible to rethink the relationship between subjectivity and community in the Union. This is important because potential solutions to fundamental problems of legitimacy, solidarity, and the lack thereof, hinge on how the relationship is understood.

With the progressive “accession” of the German Democratic Republic to the Federal German Republic after the reunification in 1990, Germany had to deal with a number of impediments emanating from the attempt to reconcile different political, social and legal models that developed during the forty years of separation between East and West Germany. Among these was the issue of how the property order in Germany would be influenced by seeking to integrate two such different socio-political and legal systems. As the discussion below indicates, the demands placed by this issue on the courts, legislature and administration of the newly reunified Federal German Republic still cause repercussions.

On 3 February 2012, in a case brought by the Federal Republic of Germany against Italy, the ICJ decided that state immunity protects the state against compensation claims even in cases of extreme violations of human rights. With this ruling, the court established a provisional conclusion to the question of possible exceptions to state immunity in respect of jurisdictional immunity of the state and constraint measures in civil claims. This question has repeatedly arisen in recent years not only in international and European cases, but also in other national cases.

Numerous comments have already been published on the verdict of the German Constitutional Court (BVerfG) of 19 March 2013 (2 BvR 2628/10, 2 BvR 2883/10, 2 BvR 2155/11) regarding the constitutionality of the legal regulations on plea bargaining in criminal proceedings under the central provision of § 257c of the (German Code of Criminal Procedure) (StPO). The assessments range from perplexity, “mixed, but with modestly auspicious overtones” and “provisional legal security” to agreement with the decision, although only “in the approach, but not in every point of the justification.”

On March 3, 2004, the Bundesverfassungsgericht (German Federal Constitutional Court) decided that the regulations in the Strafprozessordnung (StPO – Code of Criminal Procedure) concerning acoustic surveillance of housing space (the so called “Großer Lauschangriff“) partly violate the Grundgesetz (GG – German Constitution or Basic Law). Article 13.3 of the Basic Law itself, which in 1998 integrated the right to acoustic surveillance of housing for reason of prosecution into the Basic Law, was nonetheless found to be constitutional. In the following comment, the legal status, the political background of the constitutional change in 1998 and the essential content of the Court's decision shall be examined in detail.

EU spending—more than €1.800 billion for the next seven years—is spread over a large number of programs and financial mechanisms. Implemented under the Commission’s responsibility, its day-to-day management is mostly ensured by a plurality of actors, in particular by member states’ nominated bodies. This unique context places the responsibility to undertake influential audit work that could support the EU achieving longterm benefits on the European Court of Auditors (ECA). In this respect, this Article highlights a number of issues. First, this Article discusses the annual audit opinion, to which the ECA devotes at least 40% of its audit capacity—about 400 auditors—despite the limited assurance it provides. This Article argues that the audit opinion should focus on the operation of the Commission’s internal control framework and enlarge its scope to “value for money,” thus fostering responsibility at management level and sustaining the emergence of a performance culture. Furthermore, to fully capture the synergies, the risks of double funding and competition between different programs pursuing similar objectives—for example, through cohesion, transport, energy, and research spending—the ECA should undertake a scrutiny across its audit chambers’ thematic responsibilities. The ECA should also consider increasing the number of member states covered by its performance reports. Moreover, the ECA’s recommendations would benefit from an indication about their importance, and their followup should be extended at member states’ level. Finally, this Article welcomes the ECA’s intention to assess the added value of EU spending as compared to national spending alone, hence opening up the prospect of an ECA performance “assurance” assessment.

Negotiated agreements in criminal proceedings have often been regarded as the embodiment of a negative wider trend towards the informalization of the criminal procedure, and have—especially in Germany—long been the subject of vivid controversies. A criminal proceeding in the traditional sense aims to establish the truth ex officio, which is achieved by means of a comprehensive inquiry into the facts conducted by the court during the trial, followed by a sentence that appropriately reflects the individual guilt of the defendant, which can then, in turn, achieve the procedural objective of “justice.” A streamlining of the extensive inquiry into the facts that the court would normally have to conduct via the consensual process of negotiation does not, a priori, fit the mold of a criminal procedure in the aforementioned sense. At the same time, the consensual termination of criminal proceedings—which also includes other forms of termination of the proceeding besides the concept of Verständigung, which occur by means of a preferment of public charges—is, in fact, more prevalent in practice these days than judgments rendered in adversarial trials are. Our Article focuses on the reasons why this stark contrast between legal doctrine and reality came to pass and which aspects of the implementation of the concept of consensus into the German law of criminal procedure still seem problematic.

International trade law has long been the site of a battle over who or what the state can represent. Today, that battle is taking a new form. While for decades the WTO was considered a centerpiece of the international economic order, the policy landscape is now awash with claims that the US should abandon WTO disciplines, critiques of the WTO as the vehicle for a coherent neoliberalism, and concerns about the implications of trade law for domestic industry, democratic participation, climate action, and national security. While I am a long-standing critic of trade law’s excesses, I don’t see that sudden shift as a cause for celebration. In order to understand why, I argue that it is necessary to pay careful attention to the different forms the battle for the state at the WTO has taken. This article explores the conditions and stakes of three key moments in that battle – the negotiation of the GATT and the era of decolonization, the end of the Cold War and the creation of the WTO, and the recent transformations caused by the decline of US power, the rise of China, and the systemic shock of climate change. I conclude that we cannot automatically apply critiques developed in earlier eras to the current situation.

There has not been dramatic reform to legal education for many years. Although changes to the way we train students to be lawyers certainly have been made in the past decades, there has not been occasion to fundamentally re-think the process for educating lawyers.

It is not easy to remember the thoughts and feelings that accompanied the American contingent's participation in the 1986 Bremen conference and which led to this volume. Time has eroded memories. But more than that, there is no single “American” set of thoughts and feelings to recall. Although we shared a desire to explore critical legal thought with colleagues from Germany, we were, in fact, a very heterogeneous group. We came together — momentarily — for the Bremen conference but we approached it from different perspectives, participated from different motives, and went different ways in the years after the publication of the book.

The recent decision by the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) should please everyone concerned with sound constitutional and administrative law doctrine and the proper exercise of judicial functions. It should also please public procurement authorities and successful bidders; however, it will undoubtedly displease many attorneys and losing bidders.