The article provides a meta-analysis of the structural impact of digitalization on international law. It synthesizes the contributions of this special issue, showing how their findings are interrelated and which cross-cutting trends we can observe. It uses an analytical framework designed to assess structural changes in international law by analyzing the impact that digitalization has on key reference points: Actors, norms, and values. From this assessment, it draws the conclusion that digitalization is changing, and will continue to change structural features of international law.

A new era of responsibility seems poised to overshadow the human rights discourse in international law. On the one hand, introducing the perspective of responsibility must result in an added value when compared to the former predominant approach. In fact, some justifications are inconsistent, and the most radical interpretations jeopardize the very core of the modern theory of social and legal order—namely, the centrality of the individual. On the other hand, the incorporation of responsibility into the discourse on rights may help to overcome some of its most evident shortcomings. Nonetheless, despite some positive outcomes which the new attention on responsibility may bring about, the concept is flawed by at least two major deficits. First, the reference to responsibility tends to presuppose the possibility of taking the position of a privileged observer. This implicitly rejects the idea that the moral and legal community is essentially constituted by human individuals who freely recognize each other as equal members and rightful holders of entitlements. The second deficit is instead related to the intrinsically particularistic character of responsibility, which makes it rather difficult to apply to the field of international law and relations. An analysis shows that we are confronted with a conflict: while responsibility can, in fact, be assumed to bring an added value, the costs for this are exceedingly high, because they amount to no less than the abandonment of the core concept of modern moral and political philosophy. By recurring to the communicative paradigm of rationality and social order, a possible solution is outlined according to which responsibility is reinterpreted in the sense of a time, space, composition, and content-related expansion of mutual recognition.

Human existence and dignity, just like human unity itself, are not actually rights. The essence of humanity, as regards the law, is inaccessible. Because of this, human life and dignity are included in the catalogue of human rights and in modern constitutions as the sources of rights, as inviolable values beyond the law. The law must guarantee that these inviolable values are respected and protected.

This Article is dedicated to what is arguably one of the most significant tests to which constitutionalism has been subject to in recent times. It examines the theoretical and practical challenges to constitutionalism arising from the profound technological changes under the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in our emerging algorithmic society. The unprecedented rapid development of AI technology has not only rendered conventional theories of modern constitutionalism obsolete, but it has also created an epistemic gap in constitutional theory. As a result, there is a clear need for a new, compelling constitutional theory that adequately accounts for the scale of technological change by accurately capturing it, engaging with it, and ultimately, responding to it in a conceptually and normatively convincing way.

Certain rulings of the World Trade Organization Appellate Body and recent EC Commission decisions on State aids have brought new attention on an old issue: States can use their tax systems to provide subsidies. The basic assumption against subsidies is that markets should not be distorted by government's intervention. However, a system of taxation without government is unthinkable. A different criterion must lead to the distinction of measures necessary to the effectiveness and fairness of the tax regime from tax measures that distort competition.

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.

How could one conclude the preceding collection of texts and create the closure necessary for the recognizability, citability, and, indeed, untouchability of this “Special Section on Derrida” within the German Law Journal? And how could one determine the multiple significations of each and all these texts, and connect them through a single thread? And, finally, how is one to respond to the preceding questions? Do they call for an analytical reflection on the structural indeterminacy of conclusion, or for an ethical reflection on its justice?

The present German media structures are subject to a fundamental process of self-transformation due to technological as well as societal dynamics. This is especially the case for public service broadcasting. In the post-war era, the public service networks were one of the central intermediary institutions of organized pluralism, serving both the state and society at large. It is not only the growing competition between public and private broadcasters that has led to dramatic changes to the role of public sector broadcasters. The public sector is also being challenged by the rise of the entertainment economy and a shift in focus from public to private affairs. This paper describes the hitherto established role of public service broadcasting and its present crisis. The paper then proposes a proactive legal and political regulatory strategy, which might help find a new role for public broadcasters in a much more fragmented society. The proposed strategy follows the paradigm of proceduralization, which is also prevailing in many other parts of the institutional structures of postmodern society.

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].

On 25 July 2003 the German Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court – FCC) handed down an order which is likely to give a new direction in global disputes since it relates to an act that is absolutely necessary when starting litigation: the service of a writ in a suit before a court. The Court's order is an important element in a discussion of the compatibility of German procedural law and conflict of laws with foreign, notably U.S. American class action and punitive damages suits that has been going on in Germany for a long time already. The following case note will provide a brief introduction to the debate and comment on the Court's order before sketching the possible consequences of the FCC's latest decision.

In pursuit of solutions to curb cybercrime, legislators engage in an analysis proportionally weighing freedom of expression and other societal interests. The balance between the two concepts differs dramatically across different jurisdictions. This Article looks into a widely discussed legislative package regulating the online domain, enacted by the Sixth Convocation of the Russian Parliament (2011–2016)—the State Duma. The authors operate under the assumption that the Russian approach might have a broad spillover effect. With this in mind, the authors outline the current status quo regarding Internet regulations in the EU, disentangle and contextualize the legislation under scrutiny, emphasize Russian influence over Eastern European countries, and describe the tumultuous relationship between the Russian Federation and the European Court of Human Rights.