Volume 30, Issue 2

Journalists often propose that the Judge-Rapporteurs are dominant actors of the judicial decision making process in the German Constitutional Court. As far as the internal division of work is concerned the Rapporteurs have remarkable influence on the cases. Nevertheless, each case is rendered by each judge of one of the two senates of the Court. Extensive information guarantees that the knowledge of each judge is sufficient for an appropriate assessment of each case. This initiates many deliberation processes and limits the chances of the Judge-Rapporteur to dominate the ruling.

What role do contract enforcement institutions provided by the state play for economic development? This question has often been addressed. However, empirical research in this field looks predominantly at transactions that are conducted domestically. Less research exists regarding the enforceability of contracts in cross-border transactions. In other words, despite the fact that more and more transactions transcend the borders of nation states, research that addresses the institutional foundations of international exchange processes is still in its infancy. The following case study investigates the contract enforcement institutions that enable German customers to purchase software in Asian and East European Countries. This paper’s main argument is that nation states are not capable of providing a workable legal infrastructure for cross-border transactions. The same holds true for the so called “New Lex Mercatoria”. Instead, economic actors create their own informal mechanisms in order to enforce their contracts. Particularly important are relational contracts and reputational networks. Furthermore, the empirical evidence shows that German enterprises comprehensively use the opportunities offered by new developments in information and communication technology, when it comes to the initiation and control of their foreign business relations. Due to such technical innovation, it seems possible to conduct complex and risky transactions even when formal legal systems do not provide for a workable legal infrastructure. In the age of Internet both reputational networks and relational contracts gain more and more efficacy compared to state private law.

Most European countries adopting the concepts of “workfare” and “activation” have simultaneously introduced cooperative structures like integration agreements. The aim of this paper is to show that agreements between administration and citizen, while still atypical, constitute an important and necessary element in the politics of activation and stand for a new type of social rights. Contract integration agreements are very ambivalent and demanding instruments that - entrenched in a relation of dominance and control - deploy their proper logic and will only function within an adequate administrative setting. This will be discussed in analyzing the outcomes of the evaluation program of the German Hartz legislation especially concerning (1) legal program and its administration, (2) the composition of employment programmes and the structures of communication, (3) organization and resources of services and (4) the professional capacity of the staff.

In this article a micro-sociological research group originally assembled to study criminal defense casework investigates the issue of ethnographic access. The three authors represent three different countries (Germany, the USA, and the UK) with their respective legal contexts. They approach these contexts with Clifford Geertz. Specifically, the authors utilize Geertz’s notion of polarization as an ethnographic resource and a unit of comparison. The authors examine polarization in the narrative mode, comparing different experiences of accessing law firms. The narratives address relevant conceptual and pragmatic issues. For the main findings the authors suggest that accessing ethnographic fields indeed depend on the setting, personality, and the sought-out data; however, one additional factor seems to be universally applicable for all the contexts: access to law is an on-going phenomenon which is predicated on the insider/outsider separation. The notion of hospitality allows the researcher to mitigate that separation (polarization) in the ways intrinsic to the investigated context.

Law, legal professions and legal institutions are strongly present in the media but are rarely discussed at German schools. A survey at German high schools and technical colleges analysed media consumption and school education. It was found that there is few law-related education and students favoured to learn more about law. The students themselves felt more influenced by press, TV and film than by school lessons. Generally, students held a positive view on the courts and legal professions.