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How Judges Are Selected in Germany

Posted by: Jenny Gesley

When President Obama announced the nomination of Merrick B. Garland, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on March 16, 2016, it garnered a lot of media attention. Thinking about my native Germany, I realized that I could not remember hearing or reading …

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Legal Challenges for Uber in the European Union and in Germany

Posted by: Jenny Gesley

To “Uber” is now a verb. This development reflects the rapid expansion of the mobile ride-hailing company Uber in the United States and the rest of the world. However, in many European jurisdictions, and particularly in Germany, Uber has run into regulatory roadblocks. Uber offers “a technology platform that enables users of Uber’s mobile applications …

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The Volkswagen Litigation

Posted by: Jenny Gesley

In September 2015, the German automaker Volkswagen (VW) admitted that it had manipulated software in around eleven million diesel vehicles worldwide to cheat on emissions tests. As more and more details emerged in the ensuing weeks and months, VW’s share value rapidly declined by 30 percent. U.S. regulators levied heavy fines of up to US$15.3 billion …

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New Law Library Reports Cover Access to Encrypted Communications and Intelligence Gathering

Posted by: Jenny Gesley

More and more internet traffic is encrypted. Encryption is a method of protecting electronic information by converting it into an unintelligible form (encoding) so that it can only be decoded with a key. Google stated in its latest transparency report that 85% of requests from around the world to Google’s servers used encrypted connections in …

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Nuremberg Trial Verdicts

Posted by: Jenny Gesley

Seventy years ago – on October 1, 1946 – the Nuremberg trial, one of the most prominent trials of the last century, concluded when the International Military Tribunal (IMT) issued the verdicts for the main war criminals of the Second World War. The IMT sentenced twelve of the defendants to death, seven to terms of …

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European Minimum Wage – Towards an Ever Closer Union?

Posted by: Jenny Gesley

This is a guest post by Molly O’Casey, foreign law intern in the Global Legal Research Directorate, Law Library of Congress. Molly has recently graduated from a dual law degree (civil law/common law) program between University College Dublin, in Ireland, and Université Paris II Pantheon-Assas, in France. According to statistics published by Eurostat, the European …

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An Interview with Felix Beulke, Foreign Law Intern

Posted by: Jenny Gesley

Describe your background I am from Germany and grew up in a town called Passau which is located on the outskirts of the Bavarian Forest and is characterized by its university and student life. In 2008, I moved to the German capital Berlin and went to law school at the historic Humboldt University. What is …

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Brexit – What Happens Next?

Posted by: Jenny Gesley

The following is a guest post by Felix Beulke, summer intern at the Global Legal Research Directorate, Law Library of Congress. It follows a blog post by Clare Feikert-Ahalt, FALQs: Brexit Referendum. On June 23, 2016 the United Kingdom held a referendum on whether to leave or to remain in the European Union (so called …

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60 Year Anniversary of the German Compulsory Military Service Act

Posted by: Jenny Gesley

Conscription in the German Federal Republic began on July 21, 1956 when the German Compulsory Military Service Act (Wehrpflichtgesetz) entered into force. It lasted for 55 years until, on July 1, 2011, the German Bundestag (parliament) decided to suspend conscription and convert the German Armed Forces into an army of professional and volunteer soldiers. Instead of …