I cannot avoid beginning on an embarrassing note –– speaking to you as possibly the next German Foreign Minister. That is a position I will have earned because it is a good old (bad) tradition in Germany that its Foreign Ministers speak English either not at all or so badly that it is better if they do not speak it. Some say that not being able to speak English is even a requirement for becoming Foreign Minister. Well, in that case my prospects are excellent. I hope you will forgive my poor English.

The welfare state aspect is among the central characteristics of German statehood as established by the constitution. For the Basic Law's drafters, it was so indispensable that they included the mandate of a welfare state in the catalogue of constitutional principles which are to have eternal validity within the constitution and which could only be dispensed with at the cost of breaching the constitution, the cost of revolution (Article 79(3) of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz in German; hereinafter “GG”)). Article 79(3) GG codifies the distinction between constitution and constitutional provision made prominent by Carl Schmitt, whose constitutional doctrine of 1928 asserted that, while the constitutional legislature can amend an individual provision in the constitution, the constitution as a whole is not to be changed short of political action transcending the law, that is, a revolution. Article 79(3) GG takes up this idea, insulating certain features of the constitution from amendment. These features—outside all democratic reach and thus quasi depoliticized—include the inviolability of human dignity (Article 1(1) GG) and the nature of the state as a democracy, a republic, a federal state based on the rule of law, and a “social” state (Article 20(1) GG). On closer scrutiny, the principles underlying the state's structure reveal a significant difference between, on the one hand, the principles of democracy, federalism, the rule of law, and republicanism and, on the other, the principle of the welfare state. The four former features stem from long traditions in constitutional law; modern political philosophy has detailed them precisely and the Basic Law concretizes them in thorough regulations. In contrast, the political history of ideas has failed to produce a “flag-bearing” thinker for the welfare state. The establishment of the welfare state has played no significant role in constitutional history. And, on first glance, even the Basic Law seems to provide hardly any specifics as to what exactly makes up its “social” state or, in particular, what normative consequences follow from this constitutional principle. This raises the question: What actually justifies the principle of the welfare state's illustrious position among those constitutional entities endowed with highest relevance? The following discussion develops the answer: Regardless of its limited historical and theoretical traditions, the principle of the Sozialstaat finds its meaning beyond its doctrinal content in its own distinct, symbolic substance.

According to liberal political theorists, such as John Locke and Adam Smith, liberty and equality are competing values. In Canadian constitutional law, the commitment to liberal individualism has pushed questions of socio-economic rights from the constitutional sphere into the political one.

“Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect shall be the duty of all state authority.” It is with this proclamation in Article 1(1) Basic Law (“Grundgesetz” or “GG”) that the German Constitution starts its section on fundamental rights. When the Parliamentary Council formulated this basic right, they had in mind the denial of fundamental rights during the period of National Socialism and the atrocities of the Holocaust. The framers, however, did not envisage a constitutional right to state benefits despite Article 151(1) of the Weimar Imperial Constitution of 1919 linking the ordering of economic life with the purpose of ensuring a dignified existence for all. Utilizing a constitutional originalism approach the German Federal Constitutional Court (“FCC”) never could have arrived at what is referred to as the Hartz IV decision. This decision creates a constitutional right to guarantee by law a subsistence minimum based on Article 1(1) GG in conjunction with the social state principle in Article 20(1) GG. The decision can be read as—possibly the first—conceptualisation of a constitutional socio-economic right to statutory state benefits by a Constitutional Court.

In February 2010, the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) issued a ruling on the so-called “Hartz IV legislation.” The ruling dealt with the law on social benefits according to the Second Book of the German Code of Social Law and was based on the “fundamental right to the guarantee of a subsistence minimum” derived from the declaration of human dignity in Article 1(1) of the German Basic Law in conjunction with Article 20(1), the principle of the social welfare state.

Trümmerfilme (“rubble films”) provide a first-hand, although cinematographic, view of postwar Germany. They depict the myriad of postwar living conditions and day-to-day problems. The German word Vergangenheitsbewältigung means “the process of dealing with the past.” This term captures the film directors' respective approaches to depicting the past as a process rather than a single act. The Trümmerfilme are essential for anyone studying the postwar period. Although the films do not provide a complete or uniform approach, they provide numerous insights into the predominant problems faced by Germans during the immediate postwar period. Through the depiction of these social conditions, the films provide insight into the origin of the Basic Law's commitment to the Sozialstaat.

A new movement has come to legal science. It strikes self-awareness into the minds of all jurists who falsely believe their deeds fully consistent with their ideals. It pierces and destroys these delusions and undertakes now, in light of new, less modest ideals, to justify our constant activity to ourselves: the creation of law. Yet, no matter how audibly our movement is simultaneously heralded in various fields, it still lacks unity and awareness of its power. Therefore, we venture an attempt here to summon all its best forces into unity: an attempt that deliberately ignores everything that separates discrete writers from one another, a unity that does not expect itself to be the system of any one person, nor the program of all of them, and therefore acts on its own responsibility.

“The right of privacy … is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

The Max Planck Institute's research on international judicial institutions as lawmakers, which was published in May as a special issue of the German Law Journal, is an important contribution to the analysis of one of the most complex and controversial legal issues in our epoch. In the last two decades, international adjudication has become a recurrent source of legal concern, and sometimes even a source of public concern.

In its Aid Measures for Greece and Euro Rescue Package case, the German Federal Constitutional Court affirmed the Parliament's budget authority to provide financial aid measures to the European Monetary Union. The judgment conforms to the German Federal Constitutional Court's case law concerning the transfer of sovereign power to international organizations and reaffirms that German participation in international organizations is linked to constitutive pillars of the German Basic Law. One of these pillars is the Principle of Parliamentary Budget. This principle provides that any financial aid package has to be approved by the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundestag) before guarantees can be given to other states by the Federal Government. In its holding, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the aid measures for Greece and the euro rescue package were consistent with the Principle of Parliamentary Budget and German Basic Law.

On 8 March 2011, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice issued a significant ruling regarding the interpretation and scope of the concept of European Union citizenship. In an eagerly anticipated judgment, the Court held that Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“TFEU”) confers a right of residence and a right to obtain a work permit upon the parents of a minor dependent European Union citizen who has never left the Member State of his or her nationality. The ruling is notable for having redefined the “internal situation” rule and extended the reach of the primary law provisions on Union citizenship beyond Directive 2004/38/EC. Yet, some of the potential implications of Zambrano have been qualified by the Court's subsequent rulings in McCarthy and Dereci. In those cases, the Court restricted the scope for EU citizens who have never exercised their free movement rights to rely on EU law in order to derive rights of residence for their third-country-national family members in their country of nationality. Moreover, the brevity of the Zambrano judgment indicates substantial disagreement amongst the judges and has the effect of leaving a number of issues unclear. What are the precise limitations to relying on Article 20 TFEU in a situation that falls outside the scope of Article 2004/38/EC? How does the ruling impact the ongoing discussions on reverse discrimination and the protection of fundamental rights in the E.U.? After briefly describing the factual and legal background of the case, the opinion of Advocate General Sharpston, and the Court's judgment, we will discuss the questions raised above before considering the potential implications of the ruling for Member States' migration and nationality laws.