Preventive detention is, together with life imprisonment, the harshest sanction in German criminal law. In the form of a “measure for improvement and security” of indeterminate duration, preventive detention potentially may be enforced until the death of the offender. Such a measure may be imposed together with a term of imprisonment on offenders regarded as dangerous and implemented after the fixed term of imprisonment has been served. The history of this provision goes back to a Nazi law against habitual criminals that was enacted in 1933 and retained after the end of the Second World War. In the context of the debate about the new criminal laws in the 1960s preventive detention was severely criticised. The result was that in 1969 both the formal and material requirements for the imposition of preventive detention were made more restrictive. This led, in turn, to it being imposed far less frequently. While in the 1960s more than 200 people were sentenced to preventive detention annually, by the early 1990s this figure was fewer than 40 a year. There was an equivalent reduction of the number of people in prison on preventive detention on a given day, from around 1500 at the beginning of the 1960s to fewer than 200 in the 1980s, that is, about 0.3 per cent of the total prison population.

In the recent discussion on Internet law and regulation it has often been argued that technical standards have a significant impact on the variety and diversity of the Net's communication flows. This Article extends this argument, focusing on the ability to constrain Net communication through “code” and “architecture” imposed by network technology, i.e., by a source of rule-formation and rule-making beyond the traditional law of nation-states. Although I am generally sympathetic to the position that a novel “Lex Informatica” poses new legal and political challenges for nation-states, it should, however, be clear from the outset that the attention for “code” and “architecture” is something different to a paraphrase of the ever-expanding role of technology in modern society. This has to be emphasized because the discourse of “the technological”, which was already a prominent subject in the anti-modernist debate during the Weimar Republic, still casts a shadow on the contemporary legal discussion about the role of technical standards on the Internet. Lawrence Lessig, for example, confronted with a strict anti-governmentalism of cyber-libertarians in the mid-nineties, argues in Code and other Laws of Cyberspace that the Internet is regulated by “code”, i.e. “the software and hardware that make Cyberspace what it is”. “Code” itself is embedded in an environment of economic power and corresponding political interests. In a nutshell Lessig paints a picture in which the Internet is developing towards an intolerable density of control by powerful coalitions of technical experts and economic enterprises. This view may be convincing in some respects, but with his accent on “code”, Lessig comes very close to the anti-modernist reaction to the growing significance of film and radio in the early 20th century, inasmuch as both strands are based on the misconception of a technological superstructure steering the (media) world and its further evolution.

On January, 1st 2004 the new German Investment Act (Investmentgesetz – “InvestG”) has entered into force and has established a new legal frame for funds. Especially hedge funds are regulated by German law for the first time. Nevertheless the solutions, used to establish hedge fund investments in Germany in the past, remain legal and it is argued that they will continue to play a practical role. The new InvestG on the one hand modernises German law, but on the other hand still clings to a somewhat old-fashioned regulatory approach. At the same time there are efforts at the European level to harmonise European hedge fund legislation. As a result an analysis of the German hedge fund regulation has to deal with three different, partly overlapping regimes: A past, that is still not bygone (II.), a present which is still not modern at all (III.), and a near future that will bring more changes and probably lead to an up-to-date regulation (IV.). After an introduction to these three regimes, I shall conclude with a short summary pointing out the main deficits of the new German legislation (V).

Following the break-up of the USSR, the Ukrainian economy went into a lingering depression. In the last few years, however, its potential has been recovering: Ukraine is now one of the most successful of the former Soviet republics in attracting foreign investment. The main issue for a foreign investor is thus not whether to invest, but how best to enter the Ukrainian market.

This year we celebrate a United States Supreme Court decision that marks the beginning of modern jurisdiction over constitutional questions: Marbury v. Madison. This is all the more remarkable since, when it was decided two hundred years ago in 1803, it was controversial and many still maintain it was wrongly decided. Chief Justice Marshall ruled on a dispute which he had earlier had a hand in causing, since the alleged legal error – the untimely delivery of a commission to Justice of the Peace Marbury – fell within his area of responsibility as Secretary of State. He dismissed the petition because the incorrect legal procedure had been chosen. However, he did not examine this question at the outset but – contrary to the accepted procedural rules of his time – at the end. This left room for a wide-ranging discussion of the right of judicial review, which was not required by law, and was, therefore, obiter dicta. Thomas Jefferson later referred to this discussion as the Chief Justice's “obiter dissertation.” Of course, Adams himself contended that the case turned on the judicial right of review, since this was a component of his argument that the petition should be dismissed.

To adequately assess the approach to European law in German jurisprudence is an impossible task to fulfill, yet one which is indispensable.

The impossibility of such an attempt becomes clear if one realizes the multitude and variety of courts and judicial procedures existing in the Federal Republic of Germany. Our present judicial system is composed of 1,162 national courts with a total of about 21,000 judges.1 Eight of these courts are federal courts, the others are courts of the Länder, i.e. of the sixteen Member States of the Federation.

The new Council Regulation (EC) No. 1/2003 on the implementation of the rules on competition laid down in Article 81 and 82 of the EC-Treaty, which came into force on 1 May 2004, brings fundamental changes in the application of European competition law. It replaces the Antitrust-Regulation No. 17 which has been in force for more than 40 years. Regulation No. 1/2003 establishes a system of direct applicability of Article 81(3) EC-Treaty, which abandons the requirement of notification as a key element of the old system under Regulation No. 17. Under the new scheme set up by Regulation No. 1/2003 Article 81(3) will be directly applicable. This enables national competition authorities and national courts to apply Article 81 and 82 of the EC-Treaty in their entirety, including paragraph 3 of Article 81. Although the new regulation is to be considered as an important step in strengthening and reinforcing European competition policy, in particular in view of the enlargement of the European Union, the numerous changes involve uncertainties which call for adjustment. The following article gives an overview of the new enforcement system for Articles 81 and 82 of the EC-Treaty, set up by Regulation No. 1/2003.

The emerging of an early idea, – the idea of a united Europe in peace replacing the destructive force of nationalism – could not have been a proper blueprint for the formation of a European Society until the brute force of the two World Wars prepared the ground for the awareness of political, economical, and social necessities. The first chapter in the book of the European Union regarding this founding idea was written back in 1951/52 by establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) as a Community based upon law. At first, following Jean Monnet's sectoral approach toward integration in connection with the idea of supranationalism, unifying element should have been the supranational administrative body called “High Authority” (former name of the Commission in the first ESCS-Treaty). Given that the ECSC arose on the basis of law, one of the first and most important questions seemed to be the need of legal protection framing and balancing the power of the nearly almighty High Authority. This need should be satisfied by the establishment of a European Court of Justice (ECJ) as a permanent Court in the ECSC-Treaty. Although the shape of the former European Community has been immensely changed and extended through the years of integrational process, the once established ECJ still remains the judicial core in the institutional structure. But how did the system of legal protection react on the defiances of the integrational process?