What is the impact of copyright (and neighbouring rights) on art — on the conditions for artistic production as well as on other art-related practices in modern societies like trading, conserving, exhibiting, performing, reproducing and distributing works of art or reproductions thereof in various media? And what is the particular relevance of art (and of aesthetic concepts, or theories of art) for copyright? Why should the dogmatics of copyright be concerned with aesthetics at all, and what function do aesthetic concepts fulfil in the conceptual structure of copyright and in the context of its legitimization?

As a result of a series of high-profile corporate collapses worldwide, along with regular reporting of shareholder money being spent on corporate jets, executive golf days and increasingly excessive executive compensation arrangements, the common perception is that the executives of our largest corporations are driven by self-interest with little regard for what is best for the corporation. Due to this negative perception, there has been an exponential increase in the amount of laws, rules and guidelines setting in place a heightened standard of corporate governance best practice. Without such regulation, it is believed, another collapse or scandal is inevitable. In this article, I dispute this reasoning. In my view if we embrace “positive corporate governance”, in which the positive strengths and virtues of company executives are emphasised, we can move towards an environment in which heavy regulation is replaced by positive corporate norms inside the corporation. I then apply my approach of positive corporate governance to address one of the most significant issues confronting corporate regulation at present- how to deal with the rapid increase in executive compensation in our largest corporations. I suggest that the dominant methodology of pay for performance is ultimately flawed.

In its recent decision of April 12, 2005, Germany's Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) addressed concerns that advances in the technologies of surveillance will erode fundamental rights. Though it rejected the petitioner's call to limit use of the Global Positioning System (“GPS”) to track the movements of suspects, the Court did warn that surveillance technologies working in tandem posed privacy risks that were greater than the sum of each one working alone. The Court required investigators from different agencies and states to coordinate their activities and disclose all ongoing surveillance when seeking judicial approval of additional methods and technologies. It likewise cautioned the Bundestag (German Federal Parliament) to monitor advances in surveillance technology and to develop new statutory safeguards that would protect personal data by limiting the use of more powerful innovations. Yet the Court's opinion left many questions unanswered. It did not explain how legislators or investigative agencies could avoid unnecessarily and intrusively multiplying the use of surveillance, given the overlapping jurisdiction of intelligence agencies with state and federal police. And insofar as the German Strafprozessordnung (Criminal Procedure Code – StPO) regulates only those modes of surveillance that produce criminal prosecutions, statutory suppression remedies have no clear impact on the investigative use of surveillance for purely preventive or intelligence-gathering purposes. My essay will explore the implications and limitations of the Court's opinion with an eye on analogous American law (introduced to gain a comparative perspective.)

So-called “acting in concert” is one of the most controversial problems in German takeover law. The latest discussion of the topic has been fuelled by the claim that investors, mainly investment funds, acted in concert through the application of strong pressure in order to cause the personnel change in the management structure of Deutsche Börse AG.” A further contribution has been made by the much noted ruling of the Regional Appellate Court Munich (OLG München) of 27 April 2005 concerning acting in concert in the cause of the election of the supervisory board (Aufsichtsrat). The following article concentrates on a critical analysis of this ruling of OLG München.

The 60th anniversary of the trial against the major war criminals of World War II before the International Military Tribunal Trial (IMT) in Nuremberg was the subject matter of an international conference held in Nuremberg from Sunday, July 17 to Wednesday, July 20, 2005. The conference was presented by Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, Institute on the Holocaust and the Law, Huntington, USA, in association with the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” – “Remembrance and Future” Fund, supported, amongst others, by the Higher Regional Court of Nuremberg, the Faculty of Law, Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg and the German-American Lawyers’ Association.

The pre-conference session was opened by the President of the Nuremberg Higher Regional Court, Dr. Stefan Franke, who welcomed the audience in “the room where world history was made”, the original setting of the IMT in courtroom 600 at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice. He was followed by Prof. Dr. Mathias Rohe (Dean of Law, Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg), who, as a sign of remembrance, read out a list of those members of the University who were deprived of their doctorates during the Third Reich.