Recent theories of societal development carry a heavy load; they are weighed down by their inheritance from the philosophy of history. Only at the price of a paradoxical forgetfulness can they ignore the fact that there have been predecessors, whose origin and decline, as well as the particular circumstances of their revival, must also be of interest. However, there appears to be a quest for the meaning of life, coupled with an aesthetic requirement to do a kind of elegant violence to historical complexity, which gives rise to such forgetfulness about one's own history. If one has discerned the difficulties with philosophy of history, it is only with considerable irony that one could erect a handsome structure in the form of a theory of development. There are, nevertheless, some lessons from the development of theories of development, which may permit a cautious advance. In what follows I want to attempt such a cautious advance towards a theory of legal development.

Within less than two months, three court decisions were rendered that seem to be the last step in the seemingly never-ending story of Mounir El Motassadeq before German criminal courts. First, on 16 November 2006, the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof - hereinafter BGH) found Motassadeq guilty for being a member of a terrorist organisation and for abetting the murder of 246 people, according to sections 129 and 211 (27) of the German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch - hereinafter StGB). The court sent the case back to the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg (hereinafter OLG Hamburg), which sentenced Motassadeq to 15 years imprisonment on 8 January 2007. Following the decision of 16 November 2006, Motassadeq lodged a constitutional complaint to the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht - hereinafter BVerfG), which declined to hear Motassadeq's case on the grounds that the complaint was both inadmissible and unsubstantiated.

The accommodation of religious personal law systems is an issue that has arisen in many countries with significant Muslim minorities. The types of accommodations can range from direct incorporation into the state legal system to mere recognition of religious tribunals as private organs. Different forms of accommodation raise different types of legal, social, and political issues. Focusing on the case of Singapore, I examine one form of accommodation which entails the direct incorporation of this law regulating marriage, divorce, and inheritance for Muslims into the state system. Administered by the Administration of the Muslim Law Act, 1966, the Muslim law binds Muslims unless they abjure Islam. The resulting pluralistic legal system is deemed necessary to realize the aspirations of and give respect to the Muslim minority community, the majority of whom are constitutionally acknowledged as indigenous to the country. This Article examines the ramifications of this arrangement on the rights and well-being of members of this community in the context of change. It argues that, while giving autonomy to the community to determine its personal law and advancing group accommodation, the arrangement denies individuals the right to their choice of law, a problem exacerbated by traditionalism and the lack of democratic process in this domain. Consequently, the Muslim law pales in comparison to the civil law for non-Muslims. The rise of religious resurgence since the 1970s has but compounded the problem. How the system can accommodate the Muslim personal law without compromising the rights of individual Muslims is also discussed.

This article uses the case study of Slovakia and its lackluster experience with a judge-dominated judicial council to demonstrate that formal institutions have only limited impact on the ideational level. We show that the transformation of the Slovak post-communist judiciary relied on the presumption that judges‘ interests are automatically complementary to principles of the rule of law. Therefore, the majority of implemented reforms insulated the judiciary from the political branches of power, but allowed strong hierarchical relationships inside the courts to exist. In contrast to international expectations, judicial authorities used judicial empowerment to create or strengthen competing informal practices, which helped them to maximize their power. We argue that the lack of internalization of judicial independence might explain why institutional self-governance reforms failed to trigger changes in the professional role conception of judges in regimes riddled with deeply embedded informal institutions. In order to tackle this problem, we propose that future research on the relationship between institutional safeguards and decisional judicial independence should focus on the process through which actors internalize new institutional incentives.

In a society in which communication is increasingly mediated by electronic networks the methods of police investigation change. Instead of traditional methods like questioning and plain-view surveillance, the police increasingly prefer the surveillance of communications mediated by networks. The corresponding methods offer possibilities of gaining information which were not available before. Especially if the police use them without preliminary knowledge or a base suspicion at an early stage of the investigation, these methods are characterized by their scope: they result in the collection of a lot of irrelevant information and they affect many uninvolved and innocent persons. But at the same time they may furnish exactly the evidence the police are looking for: the phone number and whereabouts of the suspect; the conversation that verifies participation in an offense. It can be no surprise that these methods have become the central methods of investigation.

The Article attempts to explore the fate of law and democracy in the euro crisis from the sociological perspective of systems theory. It consecutively ascertains the performance, the relevance, and the function of the law with regard to the current practice of restructuring sovereign debt in the euro area. While novel forms of regulation such as the European Stability Mechanism attest a remarkable assertiveness of the law, they cannot effectively command economic recovery and must cede to economic imperatives for their part. Under such circumstances, the law can no longer adequately fulfill its function to counterfactually secure normative expectations. Nevertheless, the regulatory experiments in the euro crisis may not be regarded as undemocratic. Rather, the heterarchical processes of mutual observation, recognition, and contestation among the various constituencies involved, including representatives of governments, institutions of the European Union, central banks, national parliaments and peoples via referenda, as well as European and national courts, provide some substitute for the lack of elections and parliamentary decision-making at the European level.

The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta offers a study in how the foundations of law have been visualized in the United Kingdom. The fact that the British sense of identity as a free nation has historically been based on its commitment to “unwritten” law means that it lacks a foundational text and has hence traditionally figured the law through a plurality of images without a core. The absence of a singular image on which to focus national identity became acute in the early twenty-first century as the multiplication of sources of legality and justice in a globalized and multicultural world put pressure on the United Kingdom's sense of sovereignty. The tensions manifest in this crisis can be seen across a range of images produced for the anniversary, each bearing different values. Yet the rival narratives are able to coexist in the same commemorative space, their differences subsumed within Magna Carta's status as a postmodern “icon,” the consecration of the reciprocal identification between the protection of liberty and the rule of law. The Article concludes by examining a court battle over land on the borders of the commemorative site, and at another commissioned artwork. Both, in their different ways, bring into view the boundaries and bonds imposed by the rule of law that the iconic image elides.

Jiri Zemanek, Professor at Charles University, Prague, asks what conclusions may be drawn from the current state of acceptance of the European Union (EU) law doctrine by the constitutional courts of the new Member States for their performance in the agenda of preliminary rulings. What can they learn from the experience of the old Member States? Should they follow the practice of the Austrian Verfassungsgerichtshof (Constitutional Court), which referred its first question in 1999, four years after its accession, and later repeated it several times? Or should they follow the most active Belgian Cour Constitutionnelle? Should Hungary follow the practice of the Italian Constitutional Court, Lithuania, France, Spain, or Germany? Having reviewed the case law of the Hungarian Constitutional Court and the scholarly analysis in search of the “missing links,” this study wishes to contribute to the diverse range of ideas concerning European “rule of law” integration and constitutional court contributions to it.

A spectre is haunting contemporary theoretical debates: the spectre of Network. Whether it is about techno-music or football, whether the focus is on the architecture of poststructuralist thinking, international terrorism or individual career-planning, there is one common feature of all debates: the network model. There seems to be hardly a cultural theory – in a wide sense – still able to go on operating without using (at the very least) its heuristic effects. Meanwhile, even the entertainment and the advertising industries have discovered the concept. We need not wonder, then, that it is bull market for the model on the specific juridic field too.

It is the primary task of Law Schools around the world to educate young promising adults who choose the responsible profession of a lawyer, be it in the role of an attorney, a lawyer in administrative services, in industry, or a judge. Apparently, in almost all countries, admission to these important professional roles is highly regulated, be it by law, be it by professional tradition or be it by a mixture of both of these factors. It generally requires a university degree and/or the successful passing of an examination administered by the State or a professional organization. For a law school, which feels any responsibility towards its students, legal education must first of all aim to equip them with the methodological, theoretical and practical knowledge, insights and basic skills necessary to fulfill the requirements for these degrees and exams, hoping at the same time that these requirements are those that enable the former students to properly, conscientiously and ethically perform their important roles in their respective national societies. Accordingly, the law of my home state requires that “the aim of legal education is the enlightened lawyer who thinks critically and acts rationally and is aware of his or her responsibility as a guardian of a free, democratic, social state, governed by the rule of law, and is able to recognize his or her obligation to further develop the law.”

The French are rightly proud of having spawned the Enlightenment. Their philosophers made a profound contribution to modern theories of government, which heavily influenced, inter alia, the Founding Fathers in the drafting of the American Constitution. (Montesquieu's arguments for a separation of powers, for example, are clearly reflected in the design of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the US government.) The French political class have also largely determined the nature of post-war European integration. The edifice in Brussels reflects above all their habits, interests and vision of Europe. (For example, the European Union is run by a bureaucratic elite like France itself.) This latter conception of government is, however, unlikely to prove to be as successful over the long term as the former. Indeed, the way in which European integration has so far proceeded raises serious questions about both its sustainability and its transferability.

In the summer of 2008, the EU Commission will present the draft regulation for a European private company. The Commission indicates by this announcement of the internal market commissioner, after prolonged hesitation that it wishes to comply with the urgent and detailed request of the European Parliament (EP) and to initiate the legislative process. Apparently, the arguments directed at the small and medium sized enterprises (SME) and their specific interests have now, after the EU parliamentarians, also convinced the Commission. In fact, the significance of this group of enterprises in the economy of the Community cannot be overestimated. The Commission therefore acts with appropriate responsibility in not confining itself to taking up the draft regulation prepared ten years ago by business practitioners and academic lawyers (CCIP/CNPF working group) but being prepared (as can be seen in the Consultation Paper of the General Directorate Internal Market of July 2007) to develop its own statute for a European private company. This paper is intended, mainly on the basis of that Consultation Paper but also on the basis of the EP resolution, to introduce the main issues and central regulatory elements of the new legal form of community law.

The enlargement of the European Union, the attempt to put together a constitution we can all live with, the divisions rendered raw by passionately opposed positions on the prosecution of the so-called “War on Terror” are just some of the issues which make identifying oneself as European so damn confusing of late. The inaugural conference of the European Society of International Law, held at New York University's Villa La Pietra in Florence on 13 – 15 May 2004, saw the question of what precisely Europe is fall to the international lawyers to answer. The process of drafting a European constitution had already provided the constitutionalists with the opportunity to ponder what it is that defines us and, more specifically, distinguishes us from our American cousins; in Florence, the international lawyers had their turn to mull over such questions.

Preliminary references by national constitutional courts are not an everyday occurrence in Union law. No surprise, therefore, that they attract considerable publicity and give rise to a significant amount of academic comment. However, the recent preliminary request of the German Federal Constitutional Court (GFCC) in Gauweiler constitutes undoubtedly the most important and historic preliminary reference made thus far by a constitutional court. This is not only because it is the very first preliminary request of this particular court, inaugurating potentially a whole new era in its institutional relationships with the Court of Justice and paving the way for other national constitutional courts to make more regular recourse to the preliminary reference procedure; but also because it relates to an issue of central importance for the process of European integration with far reaching economic and political repercussions.

The Bremen Regional Court is located in a monumental building – the Altes Gerichtshaus (Old Courthouse). A stone slab has adorned its facade since time immemorial. It has been placed directly under the jury courtroom – where the capital crimes come to trial. The inscription on the slab reads: “Thou shalt not kill.” During the National Socialist dictatorship the ruling powers wanted to take down the slab and destroy it. But some citizens of Bremen stopped them. Instead, the commandment against killing was merely covered with a stone slab and not uncovered again until after 1945. The admonition can still be seen today at the Bremen Regional Court. This episode from Bremen's judicial history brings to light three things. First, “Thou shalt not kill” – one of the ten Biblical commandments – is the archetype for all rules associated with human coexistence. Second, the commandment did not suit the agenda of the National Socialists, who perfected the killing of human beings in their extermination camps with industrial means. Third, the people sensed intuitively that rejecting the commandment against killing was a fatal error that would lead to barbarism. That is why they made sure the commandment stayed where it was, even though it became invisible during the Nazi dictatorship.

According to liberal political theorists, such as John Locke and Adam Smith, liberty and equality are competing values. In Canadian constitutional law, the commitment to liberal individualism has pushed questions of socio-economic rights from the constitutional sphere into the political one.

The debate over a European constitution is fully underway. (1) The issue will play an important role at the 2004 intergovernmental conference, especially if negotiations over a new model for the division of competencies between the Union and its constituent Member States is taken up at the Conference. The various points of inquiry — a Charter of Fundamental Rights, institutional reform, the division of competencies, financing, eastward expansion, finality — belong together and they beg for a solution that is fully conceptualized. With this in mind, the German Federal Government is justified in making sweeping, well thought out proposals. At the same time, the French government is equally correct to promote practical solutions while expressing a healthy suspicion of the formation of a federal state of Europe, which is the holiest of all possibilities for the Germans. Against this background, let me begin by saying a few things with respect to the legal nature of a possible constitution for the EU, before I move on to a presentation of more practical conclusions. II.