Law is changing, and with it, so too the systems of higher education and research. Over the past two decades, both have been undergoing a progressive process of transnationalisation. In the field of law, we are currently experiencing a proliferation of transnational law. In the systems of higher education and research, national structures of knowledge production are giving way to transnational institutional frameworks. Disciplinary boundaries are becoming more permeable. Today, legal scholars have to engage in an increasingly interdisciplinary and transnational dialogue on law. The aim of this piece is to provide an overview of that process and highlight several significant consequences this development might potentially hold for legal scholarship (and its media).

The Mediation Committee of the Bundestag and Bundesrat – is it “one of the most felicitous innovations in our constitutional activities”, “the most positive institution in the entire Basic Law” or, as some critics assert “a substitute and superordinate parliament” or indeed the “mysterious darkroom of the legislative process”? This article seeks to provide answers to these questions. It is however clear that the Mediation Committee has become an important instrument for attaining political compromises in Germany's legislative procedure. The Committee's purpose is to find a balance between the differing opinions of the Bundestag and Bundesrat concerning the content of legislation, and, through political mediation and mutual concessions, to find solutions that are acceptable to both sides. Thanks to this approach, the Mediation Committee has helped save countless important pieces of legislation from failure since it was established over 65 years ago, thus making a vital contribution to ensure the legislative process works efficiently. The lecture will address the Mediation Committee's status and role within the German legislative process. It will explain the composition of this body as well as its most important procedural principles also against the backdrop of current case law from the Federal Constitutional Court. Finally, the lecture will consider how particular constellations of political power impact on the Mediation Committee's work.

This essay outlines how the German Unification Treaty comprehends real property merely as a problem of transition provisions and of restitution. The Treaty therefore does provide for a small set of transition provisions similar to those provided for in 1900 for the introduction of the German Civil Code and for a restitution Act. More by instinct than by reflection or knowledge the Treaty also comprises a clause reserving later legislation on reorganizing property law. Soon after Unification having come into force this clause proved to be essential. Literally day by day, the gap between the written German Democratic Republic (GDR)-law and the real practice became more and more apparent. The difference between rights in rem and contractual rights had vanished in the GDR-law to an extent that, in the end, in hundreds of thousands of cases people did not provide at all for the necessary legal fundament for building small houses, big housing blocs, factories or public highways. Nearly every day people wrote letters to the Federal Ministry of Justice describing cases that could not or at least not satisfactorily be resolved with the instruments of the existing law. Therefore, the German parliament had to close these gaps and reorganize the rights and obligations of the people and enterprises using other persons' real property.

It accomplished this by enacting in a quick sequence a series of statutes reorganizing property law. Then it was up to the public notaries and the courts, especially the civil senate of the German Federal Court of Justice and the 7th and 3rd revision senate of the Federal Administrative Court to make these laws in practicable. Although the more difficult cases on reorganizing real property relations come up for decision recently, the vast majority of cases have been finalized. This has also been a challenge for law libraries. First, they had to withstand the general trend to throw away their old stocks, which at a second glance could be very useful, both for creating the necessary reorganizing provisions and for assisting the decisions of the courts on these new rules. Then they had to decide how to provide to their Courts, lawyers or professors the necessary periodicals, commentaries and monographs. Now these transient stocks continue to be necessary for the decisions of the courts in the actual cases – and the preparatory work on writing the legal history.

This paper discusses the protection of human rights in Germany through the interplay of constitutional law and international human rights law. It also explores the relationship between specialized human rights treaties on the rights of women, children, and persons with disabilities with “general” human rights treaties and their added value. It will highlight current human rights issues, such as the treatment of refugees, the protection against racist discrimination, and the right to privacy in the digital age.