Der 1963 auf der Grundlage eines Bundesgesetzes geschaffene und schon deshalb herausgehobene Sachverstandigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (SVR) — in den Medien haufig als die „funf Weisen“ apostrophiert — bildet das im Hinblick auf Stellung und offentliche Resonanz prominenteste Beispiel wissenschaftlicher Politikberatung in der BRD. Vor dem Hintergrund zunehmender Verteilungskampfe erhofften sich die Protagonisten des Gesetzes, u.a. der damalige Bundeswirtschaftsminister Erhard, v.a. eine „Versachlichung“ der Einkommenspolitik, wenn die Tarifparteien dem offentlichen Druck des Sachverstandes und der Autoritat eines prominenten Wissenschaftlergremiums ausgesetzt wurden, konnten dann aber auch die staatliche Wirtschaftspolitik der wissenschaftlichen Kritik nicht entziehen.

Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung

1. Introduction Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa 2. Of judges and generals: security courts under authoritarian regimes in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile Anthony Pereira 3. Administrative law and judicial control of agents in authoritarian regimes Tom Ginsburg 4. Singapore: the exception that proves rules matter Gordon Silverstein 5. Judicial independence in authoritarian regimes: insights from Chile Lisa Hilbink 6. Law and resistance in authoritarian states: the Egyptian case Tamir Moustafa and Simon Fraser 7. Courts out of context: the authoritarian sources of judicial failure in Chile (1973-90) and Argentina (1976-83) Robert Barros 8. An authoritarian enclave? The supreme court in Mexico's emerging democracy Beatriz Magaloni 9. The institutional diffusion of courts in China: evidence from survey data Pierre Landry 10. Building judicial independence in semi-democracies: Uganda and Tanzania Jennifer Widner 11. Judicial power in authoritarian states: the Russian experience Peter Solomon 12. Courts in a semi-democratic/authoritarian regime: the judicialization of Turkish and Iranian politics Hootan Shambayati 13. Judicial systems and economic development Hilton Root and Karen May 14. Courts in authoritarian regimes Martin Shapiro.

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Rule by law : the politics of courts in authoritarian regimes

Human rights developed in response to specific violations of human dignity, and can therefore be conceived as specifications of human dignity, their moral source. This internal relationship explains the moral content and moreover the distinguishing feature of human rights: they are designed for an effective implementation of the core moral values of an egalitarian universalism in terms of coercive law. This essay is an attempt to explain this moral-legal Janus face of human rights through the mediating role of the concept of human dignity. This concept is due to a remarkable generalization of the particularistic meanings of those “dignities” that once were attached to specific honorific functions and memberships. In spite of its abstract meaning, “human dignity” still retains from its particularistic precursor concepts the connotation of depending on the social recognition of a status – in this case, the status of democratic citizenship. Only membership in a constitutional political community can protect, by granting equal rights, the equal human dignity of everybody.

The concept of human dignity and the realistic utopia of human rights

The molecular biological field of epigenetics has recently attracted attention not only in biology, but also in the broader scientific community and the popular press. Commentators paint a very heterogeneous picture with some arguing that epigenetics is nothing but another aspect of gene regulation, and others enthusiastically proclaiming a paradigmatic shift in developmental biology. This article analyses a particular approach to environmental epigenetics – a subfield of epigenetics that is central to the recent excitement. The focus lies on an ethnographic analysis of research practices that enable a particular lab group to study the impact of different levels of context, for example, changes in the social and material environment, on epigenetic modification and thus phenotypic variation. The article argues that changes in the practice of doing epigenetic biology contribute to a molecularisation of biography and milieu, suggest the configuration of somatic sociality and produce a different concept of the body: the embedded body. This article concludes with a brief discussion of customary biology as a potential new research agenda at the interface of material and social inquiry.

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Epigenetics: Embedded bodies and the molecularisation of biography and milieu

1. Protection in the shadow of empire 2. Practices of protection: from the parliament of man to international executive rule 3. How to recognise lawful authority: Hobbes, Schmitt and the responsibility to protect 4. Who decides? Who interprets?: jurisdiction, recognition and the institutionalisation of protection 5. The question of status and the subject of protection.

International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect

In dem bisher umfangreichsten Band seiner Tetralogie versucht S. nach der Behandlung der Zeit von 1945-1990 noch mit einem „Rückblick“ und einem „Nachwort“ so etwas wie eine Betrachtung des Gesamtertrags seiner vier Bände. Das Gesamtwerk ist indessen nicht Gegenstand der vorliegenden Rezension, sondern nur der IV. Band. Dabei geht es im Folgenden um eine kompakte Schilderung des Inhalts (s. u. 2) und um eine Gesamtwürdigung (s.u. 3 u. 4) des Bandes.

Geschichte des öffentlichen Rechts in Deutschland

Hermann Conring (1606-1681) : Beiträge zu Leben und Werk

Riesenschildkröte mit Register [Rezension von: Joachim Ritter, Karlfried Gründer, Gottfried Gabriel, Margarita Kranz (Hg.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Bd. 13, Register, 1046 Sp., XVIII S. Corrigenda zu den Bänden 1–2, mit beigelegter CD, Basel: Schwabe 2007]

This history of the discipline of public law in Germany covers three dramatic decades of the twentieth century. It opens with the First World War, analyses the highly creative years of the Weimar Republic, and recounts the decline of German public law that began in 1933 and extended to the downfall of the Third Reich. The author examines the dialectic of scholarship and politics against the background of long-term developments in industrial societies, the rise of the interventionist state, the shift of state law and administrative law theory, and the emergence of new disciplines (tax law, social law, labour law, business administration law). Almost all the issues and questions that preoccupy state law and administrative law theory at the dawn of the twenty-first century were first pondered and debated during this period. Stolleis begins by emphasizing the long farewell to the nineteenth century and then moves on to examine the doctrine of state law and administrative law during the First World War. The impact of the Weimar Constitution and the of the Versailles Treaty on the discipline is discussed. Here the famous 'quarrel of direction' that occurred in the field of state law doctrine (1926-1929) played a central role. But equally important was the development of state law and administrative law theory (in both the Reich and its constituent states), administrative doctrine, and the jurisprudence of international law. Part two of the book is devoted to the impact of National Socialism. The displacement of Jewish scholars, the change of direction in the professional journals, and the shutdown of the Association of State Law Teachers form one aspect of the story. The other aspect is manifested in the erosion of public law and in the growing sense of depression that gripped its practitioners. In the end, it was not only state law that was destroyed by the Nazi experience, but the scholarly discipline that went with it. The author tackles questions about the co-responsibility of scholars for the Holocaust, and the reasons fwhy academic teachers of public law were all but absent in the opposition to the Nazi regime.

Michael Stolleis

Papers

Geschichte des öffentlichen Rechts in Deutschland

Hermann Conring (1606-1681) : Beiträge zu Leben und Werk

Riesenschildkröte mit Register [Rezension von: Joachim Ritter, Karlfried Gründer, Gottfried Gabriel, Margarita Kranz (Hg.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Bd. 13, Register, 1046 Sp., XVIII S. Corrigenda zu den Bänden 1–2, mit beigelegter CD, Basel: Schwabe 2007]

A history of public law in Germany, 1914-1945

[Rezension von: Horst Dreier (Hrsg.): Grundgesetz-Kommentar. 2. Aufl. Bd. I: Präambel, Art. 1 – 19. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004]