The field of drug studies is increasingly challenged by the rapid digitalisation of drug markets, raising the importance of reconsidering how drug laws and policies respond to the role of technologies in the drug trade, and their social impact. This chapter considers the famous case of Maximilian Schmidt, who was accused of setting up Germany’s largest digital drug shop under the alias Shiny Flakes and became the subject of media stories and Netflix TV productions. The case offers an opportunity to explore how the move to digitally mediated drug supply has altered the ways in which phenomena such as the ‘dealer’ and ‘dealing’ are constituted in socio-technical and legal contexts.1 Research shows that digital drug markets pose serious challenges to jurisdictional and regulatory frameworks and governments require costly and laborious police operations to adapt to the rapid development of these markets (EU Drugs Strategy 2021–2025, 2021; UNODC, 2022). Following the transition of drug markets and traditional dealer activities to digitally mediated formats, it has become important to consider how drug dealers and dealing are constituted and handled in law, and whether the technological means of dealing are reshaping how questions of responsibility, ‘harm’ and entrepreneurship are being understood.

Chapter 5 addresses the German–Polish Convention of 15 May 1922, a legal instrument that was negotiated with the direct participation of the League Secretariat and whose aim was the smooth partition of the multi-ethnic industrial region of Upper Silesia. It shows that while this treaty provided opportunities for ‘peace through law’, it ultimately failed to meet this expectation. After providing an overview of the Convention’s drafting process and its key features, notably its reliance on international procedural avenues to guarantee individual rights, the chapter examines these guarantees and how they came into being. It then focusses on the role of the president of the Mixed Commission for Upper Silesia, Felix Calonder, a vocal proponent of ‘peace through law’. In his role as local guarantor of minority rights, Calonder developed a systematic case law that was unequalled before the advent of the international human rights law bodies after the Second World War and foreshadowed some of the principles adopted by them. It concludes by reflecting on the various limitations that this law shared with other attempts to use legal techniques to solve interstate conflicts of the interwar period.

This chapter explores Germany’s legal relationship with European integration, particularly the interplay between the German Constitutional Court (BVerfG) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ). It highlights the tension arising from the ECJ’s constitutional interpretation of European law and the role of the BVerfG in balancing constitutional requirements under the Basic Law. Predominant focus falls on the evolution of the Solange doctrine developed by the BVerfG, which conditionally accepts the ECJ’s primacy based on a theory of structural congruence - ensuring democratic accountability, rule of law, and rights protection in European governance comparable to Germany’s standards. The development of the structural congruence idea, how it came to inform the BVerfG, and its place in historical debates among German legal scholars all fall under the spotlight. It concludes that while the BVerfG has often admonished the ECJ, its critique aims to ensure a cohesive and democratic European constitutional order.

The study of European capitalism since 1945 has revealed three key findings. First, Europe’s governance of capitalism has been marked by four main periods: : 1) embedded liberalism (1945–73); 2) global attempts at mixed capitalism (1973–92); 3) high neoliberalism (1992–2016); and 4) the return of community capitalism since 2016. Second, Europeans have invented an original system to reach compromise between both states and the three types of capitalist governance, thereby offering choice, far from the image of a neoliberal technocratic dictatorship. The European Union is a mix between the influence of many countries, including Germany, France, and Britain, in addition to Italy and many others. Third, the trinity points to three alternatives that were – and still are – present: the neoliberal free-trade area, the socio-environmental alternative and the challenge of the return of community capitalism, between protectionist tensions, Fortress Europe and the possible hollowing out of the European Union from the pressure of growing nationalism.

A targeted European welfare state emerged between 1950 and 1992, one that was referred to in the late 1980s as the ‘social flank to the internal market’. This chapter will begin with a chronological overview, including a first section on the slow development of this European social policy between 1945 and 1985, and a second one its heights under Jacques Delors (1985–1995). It will then proceed with a topical exploration of European measures in this area (protecting the weak, environmental policy, regional solidarity), before concluding with an analysis of the two most important alternatives that were later abandoned: planning, and comprehensive social and fiscal harmonisation. This relative weakness of social Europe can be explained by its late development, by the sheer difficulty of organising a transnational social movement, as well as by divisions among its supporters. Besides, Thatcher was a formidable obstacle, one that Delors sought to circumvent through greater use of qualified majority voting. Other important actors were European trade unions, gender and environmental activists, as well as members of the European Parliament.

In an exceptional phenomenon in world history, eleven European countries, among the richest in the world, freely decided to create a monetary union in 1992, doing so during a powerful neoliberal shift. How to explain this, and what connection is there between European monetary integration and neoliberalism? This chapter argues that monetary union cannot be reduced exclusively to its neoliberal dimension, as forging such a union was devised by European leaders before the neoliberal turn, and had numerous justifications including ones more consistent with the solidarity and the community governance of capitalism. While the literature on the history of the European Monetary Union is extensive, additional archival research conducted for this book has shed new light on two neglected factors: the importance of projects for monetary cooperation devised in the 1950s and 1960s within the framework of the EEC (before the neoliberal turn); and the crucial importance of concerted stimulus in 1978, followed by German balance of payment difficulties in 1980–1981, which explain the convergence towards stability-oriented policy.

In many European countries, sodomy statutes institutionalized the scrutiny of homosexual acts. Magistrates’ reliance on forensic experts to explain sexual deviance in terms of criminal responsibility stimulated the emergence of a medical concept of homosexuality. Belgian courts, however, displayed no such ‘will to know’ about the nature of ‘perversion.’ A comparison of German and Belgian legal logics pertaining to indecency demonstrates how the former was preoccupied with a perpetrator’s motives, while the latter deliberately ignored them. German courts often had recourse to medical expertise to understand what drove (homo)sexual offenders, whereas the Belgian judiciary preferred to omit these hard-to-prove intricacies by stubbornly sticking to the facts of the matter. Belgian trials pertaining to homosexual acts of public indecency were therefore mostly bereft of any special interest in the psychological significance of the acts in question. Unlike elsewhere, they did not stimulate forensic physicians to account for such ‘unnatural acts’ in terms of a medico-psychiatric ‘condition.’

This chapter examines the evolving engagement of the Syrian diaspora in Germany with justice processes through the lens of post-revolutionary diasporic consciousness. It focuses on the intersection between accountability for the Assad regime’s atrocities and the broader struggle against structural oppression and political exclusion in exile. Syrians living in the diaspora face a dual struggle. They address Syria’s violent past while grappling with marginalisation in host countries. Disillusionment with Universal Jurisdiction frameworks, coupled with anti-migration policies, has led to a shift towards grassroots and artistic practices that better reflect lived realities. As a result, Syrian justice efforts simultaneously mobilise and demobilise elements of different transitional justice approaches, rather than following a linear progression or standardised logic. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2019 and 2024, the chapter argues that the intersecting identities and positionalities of Syrian migrants shape intersecting justice struggles, reframing justice as a transnational, multi-faceted pursuit of recognition, inclusion, and agency.

The Belgian historian Jos Van Ussel’s History of Sexual Repression inspired Michel Foucault to argue that the history of sexuality was not marked by silence but by a deafening discursive explosion. Following Foucault, many historians have sought to substantiate his influential claim by documenting the strong discursive preoccupation with same-sex eroticism in ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ from the late nineteenth century onwards. The unstudied case of Belgium challenges both the geography and the chronology of this vestigial grand narrative. Unlike in larger neighboring countries (Britain, France, and Germany), which commonly get to tell the story of ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ as a whole, Belgian intellectuals and policymakers barely broached the issue of homosexuality until the 1950s. Why this was the case, and how it complicates our understanding of queer history by breaking up the idea of a single and singular Europe from the inside out, is this book’s main subject. The Introduction also calls attention to the importance of silence and omission and to the role of religion in the history of (homo)sexualities.

This chapter discusses the renewed interest in the Arthurian matter in Europe in the nineteenth century with a focus on Germany, Spain, France and Italy. Tracing its reception from the Romantic period through to the emergence of modernism, we explore how the content,  values and aesthetic of Arthurian literature infused the cultural landscape. The form of reception ranges from the use of actual Arthurian material and chronotypes to the secondary influence exerted by the contemporary reception of Arthurian legend through Scott, Tennyson and later Wagner. The pattern of reception echoes that of earlier periods in its transnational character and, as the century progresses, it possible to see waves of interest with a ripple effect spreading out across Europe from Britain and the German-speaking lands as the material is incrementally absorbed into the contemporary cultural matrix of the Continent.

The book begins by situating my key phrase ‘making-good-again’ through contrasting the history of the terms Wiedergutmachung and restitution. I give a brief history of understandings of responsibility and introduce my argument regarding material practice. Part two gives a brief overview of the methods used in the book, situating my approach in relation to jurisprudence and current approaches in law, humanities and their intersections.

Germany’s traditionally robust public administration faces escalating challenges as policy portfolios expand, complexities increase, and resource allocations lag behind. This chapter examines how federal, state, and local authorities in the environmental and social sector cope with growing implementation burdens. While Germany’s federal structure can foster high-quality governance, it also enables policymakers to shift blame across levels. Consequently, local offices and agencies with weaker political leverage are especially vulnerable to overload. In the environmental realm, tasks increasingly cascade downward, forcing local authorities — frequently short-staffed — to engage in trade-offs that compromise monitoring and enforcement. By contrast, higher level bodies like state ministries and offices can still manage most obligations, typically deferring only nonmandatory or long-term planning. The German social sector displays a slightly different scenario: The Federal Employment Agency demonstrates strong resilience, leveraging flexible resources and effective crisis management, whereas the Pension Insurance and some regional welfare agencies struggle with increasing task loads. Despite generally moderate instances of policy triage, critical support and preventive planning are often neglected, fueling organizational frustration and jeopardizing long-term governance capacity.