On 4 September 2009 an officer of the German Bundeswehr (German Army) in Afghanistan, Colonel Georg Klein, ordered an airstrike against two gas tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban. In this airstrike, carried out by U.S. Air Force pilots, up to 140 people were killed, among them not only members of the Taliban but also many civilians. This raises the question of criminal responsibility of German soldiers who operate in Afghanistan. The Generalbundesanwalt (General Public Prosecutor) investigated the case and recently decided to terminate the investigations against Colonel Klein. Despite this decision not all questions are answered. I will present a more comprehensive analysis of the case, not only commenting on the decision of the Generalbundesanwalt, but also applying different factual hypotheses leading to a different legal assessment of the case. At the outset I will look back at the line of cases known as the “Road Block Cases,” and seek to explain how the criminal responsibility of German soldiers has been dealt with in the past.

The limitations of the management board's directive powers in German Stock Corporations are an important issue in German Corporate law. The German Stock Corporation or Aktiengesellschaft (“AG”) is the corporate organizational form most directly comparable to the publicly held corporation in the U.S. It is regulated by the German Stock Corporation Act (AktG). The defining feature of the AG is a two-tier board structure containing both a management board (Vorstand), which is in charge of managing the corporation, and a supervisory board (Aufsichtsrat), which is elected by the shareholders' meeting (Hauptversammlung) and which appoints and supervises the management board. The two boards are completely separate from each other, no overlap in membership is permitted.

The Federal Republic of Germany counts among the earliest States parties to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It ratified the ECHR on 5 December 1952, three years ahead of Italy, and hence found itself among the original members of the treaty system when the ECHR entered into force on 3 September 1953. For the new democratic Government, it was a decision of principle to affirm its willingness to cooperate peacefully within the group of European States, submitting to an international review mechanism with regard to all of its activities. Therefore, very shortly afterwards, it accepted also the individual application under Article 25 ECHR, which at that time was not yet compulsory for all States parties. For many years under the Nazi dictatorship, Germany had brought death and destruction to its neighbours. Now, organized under a democratic and liberal constitution, the Basic Law (BL), it wanted to manifest its newfound identity as a civilized State abiding by the rule of law.

In Germany, as in the U.S., the relationship between protection of privacy and freedom of expression has been subject of many decisions. In the U.S. a right of privacy was famously conjured out of common law precedents by Warren and Brandeis. Over the course of a century, it developed into a right of publicity, which gave celebrities the power to prevent the commercial use of their names, endorsements, images, voices, and other attributes of personality by unauthorized third parties. In defining such a right, much attention has been focused on separating what is commercially unacceptable from what is desirable free speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It has also been important to settle the duration of such rights. Publicity rights as a commercial value of a person's identity are therefore well established in the U.S., although state laws vary widely as to the extent of protection. In Germany, due to the constitutional background of the personality right, the balance between public and private interests still operates differently. After the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2004 convicted the German Federal Republic of violating the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights Fundamental Freedoms, the German Federal Court (Bundesgerichtshof—BGH) took the opportunity to think over its previous position about image rights. Three judgments were examined by the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht—BVerfG) and one of them was reversed.

On 19 January 2010 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was asked to rule on the application and scope of the general principle of non-discrimination under Community law. In Kücükdeveci the Court had the opportunity to clarify a number of questions concerning the principle of non-discrimination and the application of Directive 2000/78 that had remained unanswered after the famous Mangold judgment and subsequent case law. The case was particularly apt to clarify the scope of Mangold, as it concerned a similar factual situation, albeit after the implementation period of Directive 2000/78 had expired. Consequently, many issues addressed in that judgment arose anew. The Court had to deal with the relationship between Directive 2000/78 and the general principle of non-discrimination on the grounds of age, the possibility of justifying differential treatment on the basis of national social and employment policies, the extent of the doctrine of indirect effect, and the direct horizontal effect of directives.

The 50th Assistententagung, the annual meeting of public law assistants, convened this year in Greifswald. Greifswald is not only home to academic institutions, but also has a long legal history and is the host city of both the State Constitutional Court and the Highest Court of Administrative Law in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The meeting's aim was to facilitate an exchange between postdoctoral and doctoral candidates on questions relating to public law. Until 1959, the assistants in public law, who are usually conducting doctoral or post-doctoral studies, had been admitted to the annual meeting of public law professors. Assistants could benefit from professors' wealth of experience, including how to structure lectures and how to answer difficult questions, through participation in the Public Law Professors' Meeting. With the exclusion of non-professors from the annual Staatsrechtslehrertagung in the 1950s, assistants no longer had a forum to learn how to perform as academics. This exclusion resulted in the beginning of the annual meeting of German-speaking public law assistants in 1961 in Hamburg, to which not only postdoctoral candidates, but also doctoral candidates were welcomed. The meeting served as both a training course and an opportunity for academic exchange. And it was therefore in accordance with tradition that Jörg Scharrer, who hosted the first panel, had to ask the dean of the law faculty at Greifswald University, Prof. Dr. Axel Beater, to leave the building before opening the first session.

Whitney R. Harris was the last surviving prosecutor who appeared before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg during the trial of the principal surviving Nazi war criminals. He died on 21 April 2010 in his 98th year.