During their inaugural meeting in Durban, South Africa, on 9 July 2002 the African heads of state replaced the 39-year-old Organization of African Unity (OAU) with the latest international organization: the African Union (AU). With the exception of Morocco that was not a member of the OAU and Madagascar, whose president is not recognized by the OAU/AU all African heads of state attended the ceremony. The AU will be headquartered in Addis Ababa in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.

On 17 July 2002, the First Senate of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) upheld the recently enacted Lebenspartnerschaftsgesetz (Lifetime Partnership Act). The Court found, unanimously, that the process leading to the law's enactment was constitutional. The Court further found, over three dissenting votes, that the substance of the law conforms to the Grundgesetz (GG - Basic Law).

On 25 July 2002, the Court rejected the proposals of AG Jacobs and the CFI to reconsider its traditional case law on private applicants’ standing to challenge generally applicable EC acts according to Article 230 para. 4 EC. This rejection hardly came as a surprise. However, the Court's motivation for the ‘restauration’ of its traditional approach is interesting. In substance, the Court held that the Member States are responsible for both the existence and the elimination of lacunae in the EC system of judicial remedies.

On 11 July 2002, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (Eur. Ct. H.R.) ruled unanimously in the cases of Goodwin and I v. the United Kingdom that the failure of British law to recognize gender re-assignment and to permit male to female transsexuals to marry persons of their newly opposite sex violated the applicants’ right to privacy (Article 8 ECHR) and to marry (Article 12). These two cases, apart from constituting an explicit deviation from previous constant jurisprudence, gave the Court (sitting as a Grand Chamber) an opportunity to creatively apply its longstanding interpretative principles, including the search for a ‘common European approach’ – now increasingly an ‘international trend’ –, in order to evolve human rights law. The following observations will focus on this aspect, while paying due attention to the other implications of the present cases. Finally, the two cases will be placed in the context of the current jurisprudence of the Court which, unfortunately, does not show a consistent tendency to progressively advance human rights law.

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.

By order of 29 November 1999 the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling under Article 234 EC two questions regarding the interpretation of the “doorstep-selling directive”, and the “consumer credit directive”, which arose in the course of proceedings involving Mr and Mrs Heininger, who took out from the Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank AG bank a loan to purchase a flat, secured by a charge on the property (Grundschuld). Five years later they sought to cancel the credit agreement, maintaining that an estate agent had called uninvited at their home and induced them to purchase the flat in question and - at the same time acting on a self-employed basis as agent for the bank - to enter into the loan agreement, without informing them of their right of cancellation.

There is hardly a set of legal institutions that has more contributed to the creation of the common market than the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Treaty of Rome. The expanding concepts of freedom of establishment and of free movement of goods, persons, services and capital have, during the thirty years since the European Court of Justice\'s (ECJ) decision in \”Dassonville\”, by far become the Community\'s most effective deregulatory instruments. The driving force behind this development has been the case law of the Court. This case law has, on an initially slim basis in the Treaty, established the fundamental freedoms as the central element of a \“new legal order\” which has direct effect, results in the automatic inapplicability of incompatible national law and which can be invoked by every citizen in national administrative or judicial proceedings. Furthermore, it is enforced not only by Community institutions but also by EU-citizens acting as \“private public attorneys\” when bringing claims under European law against Member States for damages resulting from violations of the Treaty.