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.

On February 14, 2002, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rendered a judgement in Case Concerning the Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of Congo v. Belgium). The dispute had arisen after a Belgian investigating judge issued an international arrest warrant - based on charges of war crimes in an internal armed conflict and crimes against humanity - against the incumbent Minister for foreign affairs of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mr. Abdulaye Yerodia Ndombasi. The arrest warrant was issued under the Belgian Law of 16 June 1993 (as amended by the Law of 10 February 1999) which establishes that Belgian courts shall have “pure” universal jurisdiction in respect of serious violations of international humanitarian law. The Court found that Belgium violated its legal obligations towards the DRC in that it failed to respect the immunity from criminal jurisdiction and the inviolability which the then Minister for Foreign Affairs of the DRC enjoyed under international law. The Court also found that Belgium must cancel the arrest warrant and so inform the authorities to whom it was circulated.

April marked the end of two, intertwined eras at the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG – Federal Constitutional Court). Not only did Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jutta Limbach conclude her distinguished service as the Court's President and the Presiding Justice of the Second Senate; significantly, President Limbach's retirement also marked the end of the tenure of the first female President of the prestigious and powerful Federal Constitutional Court. It is, however, difficult to decide whether it does Ms. Limbach's legacy more honor to refuse to remark the later of these points, treating her tenure as President from a gender-neutral perspective and thereby giving life to the issue of gender-equality that is so important to her. This question is made somewhat less perplexing for an English-language commentator, who must not employ the gendered forms of nouns as required by the German language. While Ms. Limbach served as a Richterin and Präsidentin (the female forms of the German words Richter and Präsident – judge and president) in the German language, in the English language she was simply and fully (fully neutral with respect to gender) Justice and President. Nonetheless, if only at the level of pronouns, the issue persists in the English language as well: does President Limbach's retirement merit reflection as the conclusion of the tenure of a remarkable Jurist and public figure or the conclusion of the tenure of a remarkable female Jurist and public figure?

Italy belongs to the European Union, and more, it belongs to it since the very beginning. Whose status as a founding member of the European Community could be better documented than Italy's signing the Treaty of Rome in 1957? Such historic and symbolic weights surely justify high moral expectations. This might have been one of the messages brought to Italian S. Berlusconi by the European J. Fischer last month “Be a respectable and progressive European partner and the European Union can successfully face the two challenges of the immediate future: EMU and Eastern enlargement.” In a subsequent discussion at the European University Institute in Florence on 17 January 2002, the German Foreign Minister explained his convictions by passionate verbal and non-verbal arguments. ‘This is today's Europe', he announced proudly, when showing a one-Euro coin to a baffled audience. The powerful gesture was unmistakable: Europe had entered another stage in its gradual evolution to an ‘ever closer Union'. Not only the ‘Monnet method’ but also the ‘money method’ would ensure the further inseparability of the national economies and merge them into the internal market. With excitement Mr. Fischer recalled the envy of his British colleagues when Euro-kits were distributed at a Council meeting to the representatives of the Euro-zone in December. [Indeed, at a Press Conference held in the Foreign Ministry in Berlin on 14 January 2002, Fischer recalled that the British colleagues were utterly excited about the starter kit and “behaved almost like a gang of children at the sight of a marvel” The Editors].

There was a principle, which read: \“All persons are equal before the law.\” It is this achievement of the French revolution with its quest for \“egalité,\” which is today enshrined in international human rights treaties and national constitutional law, including the American Constitution. This principle no longer seems to apply since the passage of Security Council Resolution 1422 (2002) of July 12th, at least not in international criminal law. It now reads: \“All persons are equal before the law, with the exception of those that are citizens of the United States of America.\” That the principle was set aside at the same time for other non-treaty parties of the International Criminal Court (ICC), above all China, Russia and India, does not improve the matter. They are joyful beneficiaries of the US initiative.

For some months now and with special intensity in the past few weeks, a battle over legal process – what may or may not the United States do militarily in Iraq without new authorization from the UN Security Council, and at what stage and under what conditions should a Council resolution give such authorization? – has simultaneously become a battle over what words in a resolution will be sufficient to count as implicit authorization. The current diplomatic discourse around a new Iraq resolution is focussing on one or more “hidden triggers” in the draft text presented by the US on October 21.

The crucial importance of European Union's (EU) enlargement process to Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) from a political, economic, social, and geo-strategic perspective inspired much debate over the last decade. Our objective in the current study is to demonstrate the enforcement of two categories of interdependent legal provisions (Title IV and the Schengen acquis) by the applicant countries in the process of their accession to the EU. The analysis comprehends the latest Commission Strategy Paper and Regular Reports on the progress towards accession by each of the candidate countries, issued on 9th October 2002 and the results of the last Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council.

Since 1994, the United States of America have been warning of a new threat posed by so-called ‘rogue states'. (1) Following 11th September 2001, a number of these so-called rogue states have been targeted as responsible for the attacks or as a result of fears that they are plan-ning further terrorist acts. The classification of certain states by degrading terminology by the United States not only seems to be fully justifiable vis-à-vis the realisation of an emerging danger; furthermore, it could be seen as movement within the international community to-wards the identification of states which threaten international security. Thus, it is important to look behind the terms: which states fall into the category of rogue states and what consequences could follow for public international law from such classification?

The fourth section of the, European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, in a judgment from 26 February 2002, held that the German authorities, in a case involving the revocation of parenting rights, violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The circumstances of the case are compelling: the painful separation of parents and children ordered by the German authorities in the interests of the children, followed by several years of hard-fought litigation as the parents struggled to reestablish their parenting rights over their children and to restore their natural family. The Court concluded that the interference in the right of private and family life was not proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued by the German authorities.

The German doctrinal system of fundamental rights is characterized by the interplay of three components: the scope of protection, the impairment and the explicit justification of restrictions. In the traditional conception fundamental rights serve as individual rights as a defense against governmental or administrative activities which impair the protected freedom without being legitimated by the Basic Law. The impairment occupies the central role: The scope of protection shall not define but leave room for the individual freedom, and that is possible because it refers to present possibilities and to interests like self-determination, freedom of action or freedom of property. In contrast, the “impairment” is strictly defined. It is a governmental or administrative order or prohibition by or based upon law; the order or prohibition includes sanctions; it is addressed to the person protected by a specific fundamental right, and it reduces the freedom protected by this very right. In case of an impairment, the governmental or administrative act has to meet all requirements of Basic Law. One of the most important requirements is the parliamentary legal basis.

With its Schaechten (traditional slaughter) decision from 15 January 2002, the First Senate of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) nudged Germany further in the direction of an integrated, multi-cultural society. This theme alone, described by one commentator in the German press as the “explosive question of integration,” would be enough to demand our attention. According to this story-line, a modest and faithful immigrant butcher, quietly took-on a grave social evil (the illiberal oppression of his religion) and won. In so doing, he left Germany a better place.

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.