29 July 2014

JOURNAL: The German Law Journal

The following was recently sent by the Editor-in-Chief of the German Law Journal:

Dear Readers,

We are pleased to announce the publication of the July issue of the German Law Journal:


“Pas d’ Europe sans d’Allemagne.”

In an essay published in Le Monde in September, 1947—amid the still smoldering embers of the war—the French jurist and sociologist Maurice Duverger raised the challenging prospect that there could be no Europe without Germany. That may be truer today than ever before. One of the pistons firing in the German engine at the heart of today’s Europe is the country’s influential jurisprudence. As long as this is true, the German Law Journal’s coverage will account for the intersection of German and European law. We have done that in remarkable fashion in this, the fourth issue of volume fifteen. Peter Lindseth, in his provocative and insightful article, responds in part to the claims former German Constitutional Court Justice Udo Di Fabio has made about the limits on the democratic possibilities of a united Europe. Lindseth is referring to a German debate and by doing so he is helping frame the broader discussion about European democracy. Roderic O’Gorman can point, in part, to German policy in the Eurozone crisis as a basis for the difficult austerity program Ireland is pursuing. And with some well-placed academic irony, O’Gorman resorts to the German constitutional jurisprudence recognizing a right to a subsistence minimum of social welfare support as the basis for criticizing the German insistence on austerity as part of the Eurozone recovery. Stefan Thiel surveys European constitutional courts’ Lisbon Treaty judgments, including the decisions of the Czech Constitutional Court, the French Conseil constitutionnel, and the Polish Constitutional Tribunal. But the German Constitutional Court’s seminal 2009 decision helped set the tone and framework for these dramatic domestic constitutional engagements with Europe. That decision is given thorough treatment in Thiel’s article. Even Gábor Spuller’s article on developments in Hungarian constitutional law recognizes that this is both a European story as well as a story about the influence of German law and legal institutions, if only as models, in Hungary.


The Developments section has two remarkable contributions as well: Marc Englehart’s survery of economic criminal law; and Robert Muharremi’s thoughtful examination of Kosovo’s nascent constitutional law and its possible conflicts with international law.
As ever, we hope you will enjoy reading this collection and that it will inspire you to offer the German Law Journal your work for publication. Submit special issue proposals, articles, commentary, case-notes, reviews and reports at: GLJ-Submit@wlu.edu. The Journal enjoys a wide readership around the world and continues to demonstrate its ability to stir debate and impact developments in the law with an impressive “impact factor” score and the citations it attracts.

We are also pleased to announce, in conjunction with the Centre for Security and Society at the University of Freiburg, a two-day symposium under the title “Privacy and Power: A Transatlantic Dialogue in the Shadow of the NSA.” The event will be held in Freiburg on 8-9 July 2014 and will feature commentary and scholarly presentations from a number of European and American experts in the fields of security and the legal protection of liberty. The German Law Journal has often served as a platform for transatlantic dialogue amongst lawyers, jurists and legal scholars at points of significant disagreement.

Finally, I am once again obliged to acknowledge the conscientious and professional work of the student editors at Washington & Lee University. Without their dedication the German Law Journal could not publish.

As ever – happy reading – in what I hope has turned out to be both a restful and productive (despite the compelling spectacle in Brazil!) summer.

Russell Miller
Editor-in-Chief

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