On 20 March 2002, the XIIth Senate of the Bundesgerichtshof (BGH - Federal Court of Justice), the highest appeal court in civil law matters, was called to decide a case in which a separated husband had made an application to change a periodical maintenance payment order, arguing mainly that his wife no longer living with him had a close relationship with another man and that it was therefore an undue hardship to him, in the sense of para. 1597 no. 7 Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB - German Civil Code), to continue periodical maintenance payments at all. The separated wife argued that she did not cohabit with the man and had no intimate sexual relationship with him, since he was homosexual, that therefore no marriage-like relationship existed and maintenance payments should continue unchanged, since this obligation was no undue hardship towards the obliged spouse. The Federal Court of Justice judged in the last instance that the decision of the lower court, which had reduced the maintenance obligation, was correct, since the facts showed that a marriage-like relationship between the separated wife and her close friend existed; whether or not they had intimate sexual relations did not matter.

On May 22, Mr Rolf-Ernst Breuer, until then speaker of the managing board of Deutsche Bank AG (“Bank”), stepped aside to let Mr Josef Ackermann take his place in the small circle of leading managers of Europe's biggest banking institution. Mr Breuer takes the chair of the Bank's supervisory board, as is often practice for the departing Speaker in German stock corporations. This would – in and by itself – be less noteworthy were it not marking, at the same time, possibly a fundamental change in German company structure. The French newspaper, Le Monde, asked already ahead of time whether the event ought to be seen as a cultural revolution and other commentators are readily applying likewise vocabulary. Mr Ackermann has, for some time now and under immense press coverage, been ventilating his strong desires to change the inner workings and structure of the Bank's managing board and it is all but easy to decipher whether or not he ultimately will succeed in doing so and which other changes his initiatives eventually will bring about. The structural overhaul inside the Bank certainly takes place at a time where the Bank is facing financial pressure.

11 September 2001 had many effects on many spheres of our lives. One of these effects was used to great personal effect by Ronald Barnabas Schill, a criminal law judge at the Hamburg Landgericht (Regional Court). In July, 2000, he founded an eponymous political party, the “Schill-Partei,” to run for the Senate of Bundesland (Federal State) Hamburg in the elections of 23 September 2001. His party, essentially, has a one -issue platform: public safety. Having the highest crime rate of all German cities, this topic is very important in Hamburg. Schill's party fills a gap in the political market in Hamburg and polled 10% in surveys leading up to the September election. Certainly, some of these votes can be accounted for as protest votes, aiming more for political change in the city-state's politics than serving as a ringing endorsement of Schill. Schill seems to have especially benefited from the events of 11 September. Schill, well known as “Judge Merciless,” was able to hit the nerves of the voters by playing on their fear and the shock, particularly spinning the fact that two of the terrorists had lived in Hamburg. The nickname “Judge merciless” had been created by the press because of Schill's rigorous execution of the law and his often outlandish behavior towards the accused and spectators at his trials over which he presided. He is identified with “law and order” or zero tolerance politics Schill focused the last weeks of his campaign on claims that their city had become a nest of terrorism; now more than ever, offering his strict brand of politics emphasizing public safety as the answer. This campaign strategy seems to have been successful, increasing Schill's vote in the election to 20% and guaranteeing that his party a share in the new government along with the State Senator of the Interior position for Schill. In spite of this success, Schill was recently indicted for the crime of perversion of justice pursuant to § 339 Strafgesetzbuch (StGB — German Criminal Code).

A landmark in German immigration law could founder on a technical point of procedure in the Bundesrat, the legislative body in Germany that represents the states at the national level. A bill acknowledging, for the first time, that Germany is a country of immigration won a majority of votes in the popularly elected branch of the national parliament. Introduced and championed by the governing Social Democratic-Green coalition, the controversial bill survived the stiff opposition of Christian Democrats, the minority party. But Germany is a federal republic and, accordingly, this bill, like others involving vital state interests, constitutionally requires the Bundesrat's consent.

The question of the detention of suspected Al-Quaida terrorists on Cuba is fast on its way to becoming a cause célèbre. It has all the attributes of it: the big names, the imminent courtroom drama, the drumbeat of the media. Camp X-Ray has become a symbol, although, of what is not entirely clear.

Recently, the German law governing atypical forms of work has been amended in several respects. The Beschäftigungsförderungsgesetz 1985 (BeschFG 1985 - Act on the Improvement of Employment Opportunities), regulating part-time work (Teilzeitarbeit) and (partially) fixed-term contracts (befristete Arbeitsverhältnisse), has been replaced by the Gesetz über Teilzeitarbeit und befristete Arbeitsverträge (TzBfG - Act on Part-Time Work and Fixed-Term Contracts), in force since 1 January 2001, and implementing Directive 97/81/EC on Part-Time Work and Directive 99/70/EC on Fixed-Term Contracts. The legislator, however, did not confine himself to implementing EC law but regarded the obligation to implement the Directives as a stimulus to amend the right of part-time work and fixed-term contracts fundamentally. In doing so, he fixed a level of employee protection much higher than required by the Directives. The legal rules for temporary work (Leiharbeit) have not yet been fundamentally changed. But the Job-AQTIV-Gesetz (Job-AQTIV-Act) has amended it in a way at least partially anticipating the presumably soon to be adopted Directive on Temporary Work. Both acts, the Act on Part-time Work and on Fixed-Term Contracts as well as the Job-AQTIV-Act, aim at a reduction of the numbers of unemployed and the creation of employment opportunities. This article sketches and briefly comments on the new rules for fixed-term work, temporary and part-time work.

The first directives regulating the use and trade of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) were adopted at the Community level in 1990. These acts formed a core of the Community gene technology legal regime and harmonised the authorisation procedures prior to both contained use and deliberate release of genetically modified organisms. Accordingly, no GMO may be placed on the European Union market without obtaining a written consent for it and only after an appropriate environmental risk assessment has been carried out. Under the old Deliberate Release Directive 90/220, 18 GM products were allowed to be placed on the Community market following either the Commission decisions or Member States consent and over 1000 were notified to the Member States authorities for experimental purposes.

Since the mid-90\'s Germany has seen a whole range of laws on corporate governance: first and foremost the KonTraG, i.e. the law on control and transparency, followed by the NaStraG, i.e. the law on registered shares and the facilitating of proxy voting, then, more recently, the TransPuG, i.e. the law on transparency and disclosure, and - finally - the German Corporate Governance Codex issued by the Cromme Commission – and there is probably more to come during the next legislative period. What are the reasons for this striking increase in activity? What are the driving forces and is there a master plan behind these efforts?

For those concerned with the future of Euro-American relations, patience should be the order of the day. It is perfectly possible that the Bush Administration will turn out to be a short-term aberration.

With the implementation of the Court of First Instance (CFI) on 31 October 1989, a major change occurred in the judicial system of the European Communities. Article 225 EC (ex Article 168 a EEC) became the legal foundation for the new CFI. The main reason for establishing a new Court in the Judicial System of the European Communities was the rapidly growing workload and the increasing complexity of the cases before the Court of Justice of the European Communities (ECJ), which led to a great backlog of cases and a general increase in the average time the ECJ was taking to complete the cases submitted to it. The CFI is not yet a separate institution. In fact, it can instead be characterized as a new judicial body, which will become independent after the ratification of the Nice-Treaty (if and when this happens). The CFI consists of fifteen Judges appointed for renewable terms of six years. There is no assistance by Advocates General on a permanent basis but each Judge could be called upon to perform the function of Advocate General cases of significant difficulty or complexity. Only limited use has been made of this possibility.

From 17th to 28th of June 2002, the thirteenth session of the Academy of European Law took place at the European University Institute in Florence [http://www.iue.it]. Each summer, the Academy organizes a summer course compromised of a two-week human rights and a two-week European Union Law course. For the first time this year, the participation in only either one of the two courses was possible.

On 3 December 2001 the German Minister of Justice, Herta Däubler-Gmelin, presented a draft of legislation aiming at the elimination of discrimination in the private sector and declared her firm determination to have the law passed before the end of this parliamentary term. Presentation of the draft legislation complied with paragraph IX.10 of the Coalition Agreement of 20 October 1998, which anticipates these efforts.

“ROBBEN ISLAND IS A VERY SPECIAL PLACE in the new South Africa. No one in South Africa [and few elsewhere] refuses an invitation to come here“; with these words Justice Pius Langa, Vice-President of the South African Constitutional Court, aptly alluded to the symbolic significance of the place chosen as the venue for this first International Human Rights Academy. Indeed, it turned out to be quite an ingenuine idea on part of the Academy's organisers -namely Prof. Jeremy Sarkin from the University of Western Cape (UWC), Prof. Leo Zwaak from Utrecht University, and Prof. Johan Vande Lannotte from Ghent University, as well as Prof. Asbjorn Eide from the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights- to bring, for the first time ever, thirty-five participants from twenty-two countries to the place where Nelson Mandela served eighteen of his 27-years in prison and about which one of his fellow inmates, Ahmed Kathrada, who is now the Chairperson of the Robben Island Council, said that “we [the ex-prisoners] would want Robben Island to reflect the triumph of freedom and human dignity over oppression and humiliation, of courage and determination over weakness, of a new South Africa over the old”. As such, it was, perhaps, the ideal place to devote a good two-and-a-half-weeks (from April 3 to 20) to human rights in all their shades and colours.

The Untersuchungsausschuss-Fall (Parliamentary Committee Case) 2 BvE 2/01, decided by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG – Federal Constitutional Court) on 8 April 2002, concerns the so-called right of enquête, a central function of Parliament under the parliamentary system designed by the German Basic Law. The right of enquête, the investigation by Parliament by taking evidence complete with the subpoena powers normally reserved to criminal investigations, has been an integral part of both the Weimar and the Bonn Constitutions. Max Weber, in the era of the Bismarck-Constitution for the German state founded in 1871, made a forceful pitch for the equality of the Parliament and Executive. He argued that members of Parliament needed to be professionals and to have full access to the information that, traditionally, was the source of power of the executive. Instituting committees of investigation with the power to take evidence was the means to do so. In fact, Weber went further, arguing that the right to call for an investigative parliamentary committee needed to be vested in a (qualified) minority of the members of Parliament. There is no equivalent of this specific aspect in the other European parliamentary systems. Article 34 of the Weimar Constitution provided that one fifth of the members of Parliament could ask for the institution of a committee of investigation. The same quorum had the right to move for the hearing of specific evidence by the committee.

Two recent decisions by a German regional court and the European Court of Justice have sparked a heated public debate on the Continent about the objectives of German and European competition policy. More specifically, the courts’ decisions in “Zentrale zur Bekämpfung des unlauteren Wettbewerbs” v. C&A Mode KG and Zino Davidoff SA v. A & G Imports Ltd respectively, have focussed attention on the proper place of the consumer in national and supranational competition policy. The local media, politicians, lobby groups, and the general public have with some exceptions reacted strongly against the alleged benefitting of ‘vested interests’ at the expense of the ‘general interest'. Calls for fundamental changes to the existing laws have accordingly been widespread and vociferous.

Governance in Afghanistan is a complex matter. Afghanistan today is not only the territory of Pashtuns, Tajiks, Northern Alliances, Taliban and Al Qaeda, all of whom are competing for power. Afghanistan is also a social field of other political actors like Germany, the UK, the US, the UN and of the “Six plus Two” group. Is it governance without government?

The European Commission's White Paper on European Governance has attracted numerous critical comments. Some scholars seem to suggest that the whole project was over ambitious and doomed to failure from the outset, since the Commission could not complete the project without calling into question its own functional self understanding. Broadly speaking, most of the comments in the White Paper draw attention to the neglect of what is considered the European Union's core problem, that is the presumed lack of democratic legitimacy.

The European Community is also a community of Law. Nevertheless the European Community is not focused on the creation of one European Law in contrast to the Laws of its Member States. Instead the European Community focuses on the harmonization of the national legal system only to the extent that is required for the functioning of the common market (art. 3 I h EC). The harmonization of Corporate Law (art. 44 EC) was regarded as a key factor of this process. As a consequence Corporate Law is one of the most harmonized legal fields in the European Community.