Category: Weekend Pursuits

An Average Legal Career in Weimar: Because They Know What They Are Doing

Bildschirmfoto 2020-05-24 um 19.00.56Recently, I read two biographies of German lawyers in the early 20th century – a real and a fictitious one.  In last week end’s post, I wrote about the historic one, Ronen Steinke’s biography of Fritz Bauer, the prosecutor who brought Auschwitz and – indirectly – Adolf Eichmann to trial, which has recently come out in an English translation. I re-read the Fritz Bauer biography alongside Ottwald’s “Because They Know What They Are Doing. A German justice novel” (Denn sie wissen, was sie tun. Ein deutscher Justizroman), first published in 1931 and newly edited in 2018. Read More

Fritz Bauer: The Jewish Prosecutor Who Brought Eichmann and Auschwitz to Trial

Bildschirmfoto 2020-05-23 um 16.59.36Fritz Bauer (1903–1968) played a key role in the arrest of Adolf Eichmann and the initiation of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. I have written about Fritz Bauer before, first about the Jewish Museum’s exhibition in 2014 and then, amongst other posts, about Fritz Bauer as an Unlikely Movie Hero. As these posts are consistently amongst the most read, you might be interested to learn that an English translation of Ronen Steinke’s acclaimed biography has been published by Indiana University Press. This post contains further reading on Steinke’s book, and here is a link to Kai Ambos’ English-language review. Read More

What Else Happened in November

Robert BoyleThis month, we had three cases of the week: First, we looked at German Brexit-related cases. The second case dealt with the pitfalls that translations can create under the EU Service Regulation and finally, we reported on the U-turn of the Munich Court of Appeals on the right time for the judicial review of arbitrator appointments. And here’s a recap of other recent developments: Read More

The Month in Retrospect: What Else Happened in July

Robert BoyleEvaluation of the Mediation Act

Five years ago, the Mediation Act (Mediationsgesetz) came into force. We did cover the legislative process on the blog in quite some detail. The Act provided for an evaluation to take place at the fifth anniversary. This report has now been published by the Federal Ministry of Justice. Here is a link to the full report, and here is a link to a summary produced by Professor Reinhard Greger, who served as a judge at the Federal Supreme Court before becoming a full-time academic. His summary is critical of the success of the Act: In essence, the total number of mediations remains low, and has not increased significantly since the Act came into force. Only very few mediators can actually earn a meaningful income by providing mediation services. Read More