Volume 21 No. 2

Message for Issue 21.02

Dear Reader,

The year is just six weeks old, but the German Law Journal is already releasing its second issue of the year. After starting vol 21 with a bang, mapping the EU challenges faced in the 2020s with a bumper crop of short essays from prominent EU scholars, our -fully packed- second issue provides a number of more traditional research articles alongside contributions that are somewhat less usual. We hope to continue this path and engage our readers and authors in different and creative ways of disseminating ideas.

The issue covers a wide range of papers engaging with theoretical and practical matters of constitutional law and beyond. Firstly, Drinóczi discusses the constitutional identity within the EU Member States that can in many ways be shaped by an active and cooperative dialogue between the supranational and national courts. Going beyond Europe, Bassok’s analysis then demonstrates that we may have to rethink our understanding of the constitutional court as the guardian of the constitution, as Schmitt’s ideas regarding the political dimension of the process remain relevant within the current institutional landscape. Moving on to more specific issues within (constitutional) jurisprudence, Petersen critically discusses Alexy’s reconstruction of the fundamental rights jurisprudence of the German Federal Constitutional Court regarding its approach towards proportionality, Lurie considers the interaction between the doctrine of proportionality and the right to equality from a comparative perspective, Riffel discusses the potentially discriminatory nature of the investor-state dispute settlement (“ISDS”) scheme, and Jacobs/Payandeh’s case note discusses the German Constitutional ban on strike actions by civil servants in the light of the ECHR.

In addition, Winter continues our ongoing discussion on judicial decision-making processes by considering the CJEU case law in the light of behavioural economics. Ricci’s work picks up another strand of ongoing debate within the GLJ, by exploring how best practice for admission and stay of vulnerable migrants (e.g. “humanitarian corridors”), could potentially become an alternative model for the willing States and civil society.

Finally, we spend some time considering issues of culture and law that have long been a special interest of the Journal. This includes Bonilla Maldonado’s interview with Paul Kahn (Professor of Law and the Humanities at Yale Law School) on the cultural analysisof law. Also pushing for the recognition of the cultural, historical and political dimension and thus critical perspectives on comparative law, we include two book reviews discussing Frankenberg’s recent contributions to the topic. Curran focuses on Comparative Law as Critique [2016] and Mathews discusses Comparative Constitutional Studies: Between Magic and Deceit [2018].

As always, happy reading,

Jule Mulder
For the Editors-in-Chief