Law

The protection of individual and supra-individual dangers is fundamentally the responsibility of the state. This is reflected in the doctrine of necessity in the principle of the primacy of state procedures. But what is its scope and where are the corresponding potential limits? Mara Sieren-Tietmeyer analyses this question from the perspective of criminal law doctrine, taking into account aspects of constitutional and administrative law.

The current widespread understanding of the freedom of faith and conscience assumes that every religiously motivated action is protected. This creates conflict in the already fraught relationship between individual freedom of religion and general laws. To remedy this, Julian Jäger suggests a narrower definition, taking his guidance from a Federal Constitutional Court proposal where state interference only constitutes an intervention when this displays a regulatory tendency.

In analysing the crisis of multilateralism, Maximilian Waßmuth focuses on narratives and normative expectations that stabilise the international legal order. A better understanding of their role in the international legal order helps clarify the significance of their disappointments for the crisis of multilateralism.

In its last years, the German Federation (Deutscher Bund) laid the foundations for national legal unity. There were ambitious plans to establish a »uniform law« by codifying commercial law, the law of obligations, the law of civil procedure, bankruptcy law, copyright law and patent law, safeguarded by the promise of mutual legal assistance.