Some of the most magnificent achievements of human culture, from the Parthenon to Paradise Lost, have been inspired by religion and some of the worst atrocities of human history have been committed to worship its commands. In consequence, whenever questions of religion become part of the political and legal agenda of a society one might be very insecure about the solution of the problem but can be absolutely confident that the stakes are high and the discussions intense. This general observation about religious issues has gained a special dimension due to the events of September 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since then the role of religions in general and of Islam in particular is at the very core of central debates of global civil society and of the deliberations and actions of policy makers.

“If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” The framers of the German Grundgesetz (Basic Law or Constitution) of 1949 had lost Thomas Jefferson's optimistic faith that the self-healing powers of reason would render a democratic polity immune to totalitarian temptation. The Weimar Republic had proved defenceless against the rise of a totalitarian movement, which availed itself of the democratic process as a Trojan horse in its effort to establish a brutal dictatorship.

The traditional justification of consumer protection is founded on the notion of restraining the monopoly power of huge companies and the potential that they posses to influence consumers via advertising that limits consumers’ ability to verify what is in their own best interest. This theory refers not to the individual consumer in a concrete situation, but stresses a general economically weaker position of the consumer vis-à-vis the suppliers. Consumers are seen as less knowledgeable and as economically inferior to producers and traders. So a large deviation between the ideal of consumer sovereignty and reality is presumed. The power imbalance on the market (“countervailing power”) leads to demand for market reconciliation, compensation or balancing. According to this conception the state must support the consumers as weaker market participants during the counterweight

On 31 July 2003 Peru submitted an extradition request to the Japanese authorities requesting the extradition of former President Alberto Fujimori. Along with the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission, and the numerous penal proceedings against the former presidential councilor and head of the secret service Vladimiro Montesinos Torres, the extradition request is another important effort of the Peruvian government to bring human rights violators to justice. Since Peru's legal system does not allow trials in absentia, Fujimori will escape prosecution if he is not extradited or tried in Japan.

On the same day that the United States Supreme Court handed down its much anticipated decisions on affirmative action in higher education, holding that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution permits a degree of race-consciousness in public university admissions, it also issued a far less heralded decision with implications for the ability of the states to address historical injustice. In American Insurance Association v. Garamendi (Garamendi), five members of the Court, led by Justice Souter, found that California's Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act of 1999 (HVIRA) “interferes with the National Government's conduct of foreign relations” and is therefore preempted.