The right of counsel in criminal proceedings is granted by section 137 (1) of the Strafprozessordnung (Criminal Procedure Code), which gives a person the right to obtain legal advice in criminal proceedings whenever he or she wishes, or as the law states: “in jeder Lage des Verfahrens“ (at any stage of the proceedings). There are different stages of criminal proceedings, which are to be distinguished under German Law, but section 137 governs the whole process and is not limited, for instance, to the pre-trial or the trial itself.

The implementation of Directive 1999/44/EC has turned German sales law on its head, and it has also led to a major reform of the general contract law. Old problems have been solved, and new ones created. Academics and practitioners have commented widely on the reform, and their perceptions range from fundamental opposition to strong enthusiasm. This article attempts to give an impression of the significance of these changes for German sales law, of the most controversially debated issues under the new law and also of the acceptance of the new provisions and of their European origin by academics and by the courts.

The right to private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention, or ECHR) is one of the widest rights in European human rights law. Applicants often rely on the norm when they seek to justify all kinds of behavior, which may be limited or even outlawed through domestic law. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that in the case of A, B and C v. Ireland, which was decided by the European Court of Human Rights in December 2010, the applicants relied on Article 8 to complain about the restrictive anti-abortion law in the Republic of Ireland. Contrary to predictions that A, B and C v. Ireland could become “Europe's Roe v. Wade,” referring to the U.S. case which led to the permissibility of abortion under U.S. law, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) held that Article 8 did not include a right to have an abortion.

In recent years, German nationality law was subject to changes. Several legal issues that had previously not been decided by the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court—FAC) and the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court—FCC) were clarified by these courts. Still, some questions had been left unanswered; the courts explicitly demanded that parliament become active. Issues were namely the time limit for revocation of naturalization, the effect of revocations on third parties (like children) that had been naturalized at the same time and the effects of the discontinuance of certain premises that had been the condition for the obtainment of citizenship by children ex lege on their naturalization. Parliament complied with this call to action; in February of 2009, the changes came into force.

Under Chapter VII the UN Security Council has the authority to legally condemn certain behaviors by enacting binding measures on both states and individuals. This has been interpreted through measures undertaken by the Security Council, such as the institution of international tribunals on an inter-state level, and the imposition of sanctions on a personal level.

Focusing on Africa and Europe, this Article aspires to demonstrate how regional actors have acted in order to undermine the UN Security Chapter VII punitive cosmopolitanism, either through the institution of regional criminal courts meant to antagonize the International Criminal Court or through judicial decisions that clearly negate the Council's sanctions regime. In order to preserve international punitive cosmopolitanism, the Article will proceed to develop how regional jurisdictional initiatives can be integrated in the general international constitutional order, in both the criminal and the civil/administrative field.

This Article aims to constructively analyze the emerging constitutional dialogue between the Constitutional Court of Romania (the CCR or the Court) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It focuses, in particular, on the lack of a reference for a preliminary ruling from the first court, and aims to unveil the possible motives underlying this passive behavior.

The European Union has a comprehensive legal framework in place for the authorization, traceability, and labelling of genetically modified organisms, the aim of which is to create a unified market while simultaneously ensuring that the placing on the market of the products concerned will not pose a risk to human or animal health or to the environment. This framework sets out complex, multi-level procedures which entail the cooperation and sharing of information between various national and European authorities. Filling a gap in the literature, this contribution focuses on the challenges to the system of judicial accountability that emerge in this particular system of multi-level administration. This Article shows that the problems posed by composite procedures in terms of access to justice and effective judicial protection can possibly be solved in light of the current rules concerning the division of labor between national and European courts and the applicable case law of the Court of Justice. As this Article will show, many more unsolved issues arise instead with respect to the compliance with the requirements of access to justice provided by the Aarhus Convention.

The gradual digitization of EU migration policies is turning external borders into AI-driven filters that limit access to fundamental rights for people from third countries according to risk indicators. An unshakeable confidence in the reliability of technological devices and their ability to predict the future behaviour of incoming foreigners is leading towards the datafication of EU external frontiers. What happens if the supposedly infallible algorithms are wrong? The article aims to understand the consequences of algorithmic errors on the lives of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers arriving in the European Union. This contribution investigates the socio-political implications of deploying data-driven solutions at the borders in an attempt to problematize the techno-solutionist approach of EU migratory policies and its fundamental rights impact on affected individuals.

The COVID-19 pandemic elicited a surge in the use of digital tools to replace “classic” manual disease tracking and contact tracing across individuals. The main technical reason is based on the disease surveillance needs imposed by the magnitude of the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus since 2020, particularly how these needs overwhelmed governments around the world. Such developments led to stark variations across countries in terms of legal approaches towards the use of digital tools, including self-reporting software and mobile phone apps, for both disease tracking and contact tracing. Against this backdrop, in this article I highlight some of the normative challenges posed by the digitalization of disease surveillance, underscoring its almost non-existent regulation under international law. I look back at the historical emergence of the epidemiological principles underlying this procedure, by referring to John Snow’s trailblazing work in cholera control. I emphasize how the COVID-19 pandemic prompted both technical and normative shifts related to the digitalization of these procedures. Furthermore, I refer to some of the overarching obstacles for deploying international law to tackle future tensions between the public health rationale for digitalized disease tracking and contact tracing, on the one hand, and normative concerns directly related to their legality, on the other hand. Lastly, I put forward conclusions in light of the current juncture of international health law reforms, and how they so far display limited potential to herald structural changes concerning the legality of the use of digital tools in disease surveillance.

The article describes the #MeToo-movement in the United States and Germany and discusses the merits and problems of this social phenomenon. It highlights the fact that some features of #MeToo (blaming and sanctioning wrongdoers) resemble those of criminal punishment and thus require careful justification. In the final part, the author examines the impact of the #MeToo-movement on criminal law reform.

Constitutional courts play an essential role in authoritatively interpreting constitutions. Oftentimes they go beyond the constitutional text by inventing so-called judge-made law. Their authority to interpret the text covers not only substantive parts but also the clause authorizing their jurisdiction. Such power, namely the power to interpret the limits of their jurisdiction, is often used to intervene in the interpretation of the constitution more vigorously than explicitly authorized. One example is the invention, designation, and development of the advisory jurisdiction by the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Kosovo. On that basis, the Court has, for almost ten years of its existence, pronounced on numerous fundamental issues relating to the governing system, power maps, and entitlements on political authority. The Court developed its advisory jurisdiction in a rather unpredictable and impulsive fashion; however, it steadily revealed its willingness to engage with interpretations that sought to resolve high-stakes issues. Such braveness also had a credibility cost for the Court. The year 2018 marked a major shift in the Court’s interpretation of its own jurisdiction to “advise.” In the Central Election Commission case, it abandoned its previous precedent and commenced a passive, restrained attitude in engaging with the constitutional interpretation on the basis of case or controversy. This Article analyzes the Court’s path and change of course in this cycle.

Why is the fight against financial crimes such a central task for the EU? The EU has a strong interest to counter financial crimes and fraud against the EU budget as those crimes—so the EU legislator's claim is—hamper the trust in the market and undermine consumer confidence to engage in internal market transactions. In this Article, we aim to discuss the establishment of the European Public Prosecutor Office as a federal agent and the effects of this agent for establishing a robust EU financial crimes regime. Comparisons with the US system of US Attorneys—federal prosecutors—will be drawn to show that this institution has been quite effective at enhancing the protection of US financial market. The Article will then discuss to what extent the EU can, and should, learn from the American experience. We are particularly interested in the strong security focus in the EU and its consequences when it ventures into the area of financial crimes.

Democracy is usually relied upon as an important argument against the excessive influence of international and foreign law on the domestic legal order, and especially on domestic constitutional law. Both in Germany and the United States, skeptics and opponents of the Europeanization or internationalization of domestic constitutional law repeatedly raise democratic concerns. From a comparative perspective, this Article examines the German and American democratic arguments against an overreliance on international and foreign law in constitutional interpretations. In exploring the democratic concerns expressed in German and American discussions, this Article focuses especially on the contrast between German dualism on the one hand and American exceptionalism on the other hand. This Article shows that, while the German dualists and the American exceptionalists base their arguments on different understandings of democracy, they share the viewpoint that democracy can only be realized on the national level, whereas international law aims at uniformity und thus inevitably runs counter to democratic self-governance and self-determination of the states. Precisely in this sense, it can be said that there is no qualitative, but rather only a quantitative distinction between German and American democratic arguments. Thus conceived, the alleged contrast between the principle of open statehood emphasized by German constitutional law scholars and the Constitutional Court and the idea of American exceptionalism embraced by a number of critics of the use of foreign law lies only in the extent to which the reference to international or foreign law in interpreting the domestic Constitution is deemed legitimate and justifiable.

On June 30, 1980, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued Filártiga v. Peña-Irala. In this landmark case, the Paraguayan plaintiffs sought to hold Americo Norbeto Peña-Irala, a high-ranking Paraguayan police officer, liable for torture that led to the death of Joel Filártiga in Paraguay. They rested their main jurisdictional argument “upon the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, which provides: ‘The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.'” The Second Circuit held, “[D]eliberate torture perpetrated under color of official authority violates universally accepted norms of the international law of human rights, regardless of the nationality of the parties. Thus, whenever an alleged torturer is found and served with process by an alien within our borders, § 1350 provides federal jurisdiction.” It added that “Our holding today, giving effect to a jurisdictional provision enacted by our First Congress, is a small but important step in the fulfillment of the ageless dream to free all people from brutal violence.”

Since the Revolution of Dignity, civil society has become a major stakeholder in Ukraine's multiple reform processes. Judicial reform has been particularly salient as it aims to transform the country’s judiciary, long plagued by interrelated problems of political dependence, oligarchic capture, and internal corruption, into an autonomous guarantor of the rule of law. This Article examines how Ukrainian civil society has developed into an informal institution in Ukraine’s judicial reform. Building upon an overview of judicial reform efforts in Ukraine and a general theoretical framework of informality, this contribution studies how Ukrainian civil society influences the reform process, using the example of the country’s Constitutional Court. We argue that civil society has become an influential informal institution which plays an increasingly important role in judicial reform in Ukraine.

Through a literary-theatrical reading of international legality, this Article challenges the “settled script” produced by international legal scholars to frame and assess the legality of two historical events—the Grenada Revolution (1979–1983) and the U.S. Invasion of Grenada (1983). It does so by reading the Cold War as a sensibility performed by these scholars, one that recognized the operation of rival international legal orders and one that crafted a different script—Cold War Customary Law (“CWCL”)—to decide questions of international legality in a Cold War context. In addition to offering a new way to read the Cold War and international legality, this Article argues first that it is important to uncover this parallel and competing script of international legality operating at the time, and not dismiss it as unrelated political or ideological discourse, as it clearly influenced the interpretive logic and reasoning practices international lawyers deployed to frame what constituted legality in international law. Second, it argues that this Cold War sensibility in international legal scholarship on intervention and revolution predated the events in Grenada, and that if a different theatrical mise en scène is adopted—one which eschews “the short durée” or “evental history” of the settled script—this sensibility can be understood as being both continuous and discontinuous with rival imperial forms of international law operating in the Caribbean across time and place, where its discontinuities open up space to recover revolutionary Caribbean subjects of international law and a sensibility of shame in the present.

In contrast to traditional extradition law, the political offense exemption has been abolished within the framework of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). Notwithstanding its overall success, the EAW does not constitute an adequate instrument with regard to political offenses. In light of the recent case of the former Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, the abolition has proven to be too hasty and the justificatory force behind the principles of mutual trust and recognition is, with respect hereto, rather limited. The damage caused to these principles by upholding the exemption would be negligible, given the small number of cases—Puigdemont being the first political offender requested under the aegis of the EAW. However, the potential benefits are substantial, given that the exemption provides for a higher level of human rights protection—analogous to the values of European Union (EU). Solely relying on the double criminality requirement in order to properly take into account the specificities of the Member States’ legal systems essentially positions the judges at the forefront of where mutual trust and constitutional identity collide. Moreover, the exemption prevents states from intervening in other states’ internal political conflicts, through the medium of criminal law.