Volume 33, Issue 2

In 1913 Ehrlich published his “Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law”. One hundred years later the Ernst Hirsch-Center for the Research into the Foundations of Law was established. On this occasion the socio-legal approaches of Ehrlich and Hirsch will be compared. In the Bukovina in the early 20th century Ehrlich made the experience of a schism between state law and the “living law”, the law living in the society. According to Ehrlich legal development takes place in three steps, starting at the bottom from the living law on a societal level, then moving to court decisions and finally reaching the top of state legislation. In his Turkish exile Hirsch also experienced a sharp discrepancy between Atatürk’s legislative reforms and traditional, religious patterns of social life. However, in the case of Turkey (and Hirsch’s observations) law developed top down. Both fundamentally distinct approaches are discussed. Finally, normative problems are addressed which neither Ehrlich nor Hirsch were concerned with, namely problems of cultural defense, caused by the conflict between state legislation on the one hand and societal, cultural as well as religious customs on the other hand.

While intra-firm trade accounts for approximately one third of world exports, we know little about the institutions which are employed to resolve intra-firm trade conflicts. According to Williamson, these conflicts are resol­ved by fiat. His description of infra-firm contract law, however, depicts firms in an ideal-typical fashion, which is not consistent with the reality of modern transnational corporations. Hence, this paper addresses the question of how contract enforcement and dispute resolution are institutionally organised in transnational corporations. On the basis of expert in­terviews, we illustrate the nature of conflicts originating in intra-firm transactions and analyse the governance mecha­nisms which are employed to resolve these conflicts.

Using the Australian case as illustrative, this article revolves around the construction of merit, the lynchpin of the gender regime within the prevailing legal academy. Far from being a neutral concept in which “the best person for the job ” is appointed according to individual worth, it is argued that merit is an ideologically laden term which obscures a preference for masculinity. It is nevertheless not static and unchanging for its neutral carapace enables it to adapt to the prevailing context and accommodate new norms. Hence, just when the legal academy was on the cusp of feminisation, with women comprising approximately 56% of all legal academics, the neoliberal turn and the corporatisation of universities has given masculinity an adrenalin shot in the arm. Through an overview of the key academic cri­teria of teaching, research and service, it is argued that the casualisation of teaching, research entrepreneurialism and top-down managerialism have contributed to a reconfiguration of the gender regime.

Women’s participation in the German legal academy started late, but unlike in Australia it is still low and only growing slowly. Also the neoliberal change is less marked than in Australia although in the course of a glo­balised higher education market, the systems converse gradually: The introduction of bachelors and Masters is the tangible effect, the traditional bureaucratic model of university administration in Germany is increasingly replaced by modem management structures. The German law faculties have so far resisted to change, and kept their old structures intact. They basically stick to the state examination and require the habilitation for a chair. This long and thorny qualification procedure is unattractive for women who find few role models and still face disadvantages and mechanisms of exclusion. The question is whether gender politics will finally erode the classical model of recruitment.

Preventive detention as a form of indeterminate criminal custody for a more or less narrowly defined group of “dangerous offenders” has been swiftly changing folio wing some recent European Court of Human Rights and German Federal Constitutional Court decisions. This article explores the question how far new legislation reflects elements of traditional criminal-justice-polity motivated critique of preventive detention. Although recent statutes stick to the notion of preventive detention, more rehabilitative measures are established in prison.

The traditional Greenlandic customary law, which is of significance for villagers in the small settlements on Greenland's west coast, is confronted with conflicting demands by the global environmental regime. Can traditional customary rights of indigenous peoples be maintained in a global society? As the example of the Greenlandic Inuit illustrates the conflict to ensure the continuation of hunting activities, however, cannot be understood as a conflict between societies that have different legal and rationality conceptions. The intellectual elites in the Greenland Self-Government are taking over the structural patterns of the global model of nature and run information campaigns about the biological status of the species. Hunters cite their traditional hunting rights and reject this information and those hunting restrictions. As a consequence, intra-societal conflicts develop between Greenland elites and hunters and thus in situations of legal pluralism within Greenland.

This article proceeds from a short discussion of the change in intent of German social law with regard the SGB IX. First of all we present the results of an investigation (The GINKO project: law effects by the vocational integration of hard of hearing deafened and deaf people by communication and organisation) into the effects of accessibility legislation on the integration of people who are deaf hard of hearing or late deafened in the workplace. These provides information about whether and how the legal framework is implemented as appropriate accommodation of the workplace specifically with regard to the needs of persons who are deaf or hard of hearing. The position taken here is supported by §§81 and 102 of the SGB IX. In addition, we will discuss the general questions of empirical legal research into the civil rights demanded by the target group's associations. The right to equal access is a relatively recent legal issue, which addresses how the individual can benefit from the essence of the law as well as the application of new trends. It also formulates numerous options for the realisation of equity between those who are disabled and those who are not, that must be dealt within the parameters of legal effects research. The data introduced here may be viewed as the basis for a systematic investigation into the realisation of SGB IX.