Scholars in search of quality standards for traditional legal scholarship could well end up disappointed. By answering the question concerning what standards legal academics use for evaluating such works—through reviewing the international literature on evaluative standards and interviews with forty law professors—this Article aims at filling this gap. This Article recommends that traditional legal scholarship is judged by using the following criteria: (1) the conceptual design—a clearly formulated research question that is both original and significant and the adequacy of the methods proposed to answer that question; (2) the composition of a particular line of reasoning—does the researcher adhere to principles of accountability, accuracy, balance, and credibility?; and (3) the overall characteristics of a work of scholarship—the readability and persuasiveness of the whole and the extent to which the researcher managed to identify and clarify the presuppositions that may have potentially affected her inquiry.

In this Article, I have analyzed the philosophical grounds on which stands the conception of law implied in legal transplants. On the one hand, behind the idea of legal transplants lurks the misleading assumption that two different legal cultures share common epistemological accounts of what is meant by law; on the other, the idea that a certain legal institution verbally framed may be exported to another culture and touch off similar interpretations and conceptual performances reflects, at its core, a conception of language based on an isomorphic correspondence between legal words and the meanings those words are to stand for. My goal has been to critically expose the philosophical backdrop that lies behind the conception of law implied in the idea of a legal transplant with an eye to the cultural perspective. To this end, I have availed myself of different but convergent perspectives gathered from Wittgenstein’s pragmatic philosophy of language, Geertz’s cultural anthropology, Eco’s semiology, Harris’ integrational epistemology, and Rosen’s cultural theory of law, as a methodological strategy to spotlight different facets of the problem in three dimensions: Language, knowledge, and law.

States of emergency pose the most significant challenges to the safeguarding of fundamental rights and civil liberties. Crises are generally characterized by a strengthening of the executive to the detriment of judicial authority and parliamentary oversight. One of the immediate consequences of emergencies is the absence of effective domestic mechanisms of supervision of the executive. The gradual replacement of the judicial role with police operations represents a symptom of how prolonged emergencies prompt the eclipse of legal certainty and lead to the rapid and irreversible degradation of public institutions.

This Article addresses the difficult compromise between defending national interests and protecting individual rights during public emergencies. It analyzes the common features across the recent derogations and exceptional measures of Ukraine, France, and Turkey. The derogations submitted by the three countries in question, together with the exceptional measures adopted for counter-terrorism purposes, substantially restrict several fundamental rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (Convention). In particular, preventive detention measures, with the suspension of the habeas corpus otherwise approved by the three States, not only enable police forces to use arbitrary and unlimited use of force, but also seriously affect the protection of absolute and non-derogable rights. The Article concludes that, as the recent emergency laws and their widespread and apparently indiscriminate implementation present the risk of destabilizing the whole European system of protection, it becomes ever more necessary that the European Court of Human Rights depart from its previous jurisprudence and adopt a more rigorous and principled scrutiny of the derogation conditions under Article 15 of the Convention.

People of Turkish ethnicity constitute Germany’s largest immigrant group but only a small percentage have naturalized as German citizens This article explores the historical foundation of Turkish migration to Germany and the legislative attempts made by both Germany and Turkey to accommodate these people with one foot in each country. It argues that only by abandoning its long-held prejudice against dual citizenship can Germany increase the naturalization rate of all foreigners in its country, not just those from Turkey.

This Article aims at highlighting theoretical and practical issues around the application of the general principle of proportionality in EU immigration. It focuses on the application procedure foreseen by the Single Permit Directive by proposing an argument that combines proportionality and procedural guarantees. This Article has two main objectives: First, it explains why and how the general principle of proportionality is applicable to first admission applications. In this context, the Single Permit Directive—adopted as an important piece of the emerging EU legal regime on immigration—will represent a common theme for our reflections and a timely example on the practical implications of the argument presented in this Article. Second, it explores an important dimension of the legal-philosophical relevance of proportionality as applied to immigration. This specific Article might be apprehended from the point of view of a larger debate on the meaning of discretion in immigration law. It connects to the field of immigration ethics, a field in which legal scholars should become more active. As will be shown, ethical and legal considerations on immigration should work closely together, thereby improving current regulations and their implementation.

In this Article, the author presents and explains the current normative framework in EU law about the exclusion from refugee status based on the premise that a person is not deserving of refugee status. This article is directed at clarifying the present content of the legislation in force and the caselaw of the Court of Justice of the European Union that further elaborates on this issue. The Commission’s recent proposal for new legislation is also scrutinized, in order to present a possible evolution of the exclusion provision.