NSU CASE COVERED UP AND LEGALLY CLOSED: IS IT POSSIBLE TO AVOID SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REPERCUSSIONS?

The neo-Nazi Nationalist Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist group killed ten people in Germany between 2000-2007. Eight of the victims were members of the Turkish community of more than three million people living in Germany. Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos, and Uwe Böhnhardt were the nucleus of the National Socialist Underground NSU . Two of them, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, had killed themselves in the operations. Beate Zschäpe was the only core member of the NSU stayed alive when NSU trial began. Along with Beate Zschäpe, the four suspected accomplices deemed to be in the close periphery of the NSU trio, including Ralf Wohlleben and André Eminger were tried and received varying degrees of imprisonment. Germany’s highest court of appeals, which is Federal Court of Justice, had rejected appeals by Beate Zschäpe and other two convicted accomplices on 19 August 2021. The Federal Court has recently upheld the exceptionally light prison sentence of two and a half years that Andre Eminger received in 2018. Thus, the Munich court's verdict has become fully legally binding through this decision. It is reported that the high court did not find any legal errors or gaps in the arguments of the Munich court for the verdict and rejected appeals. Ten years after the NSU Neo-Nazi terror cell was exposed, with this decision of the German Federal Court of Justice, the NSU case was legally concluded and closed in its entirety. We have already explained in our previous analyses that racism and xenophobia, Islamophobia is on the rise in Germany and that we, as AVİM, consider this fact a worrying development. We should underline that the totality of court decisions regarding the NSU murders reinforced the perception that racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia did not receive the punishment they deserved in Germany and that the true dimensions of the NSU organization wilfully be left unclarified.

Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015

Chapter 14 tells the story of how Jim Obergefell, whose husband John Arthur was dying, sued the state of Ohio to try to force the state to list Obergefell as the husband on Arthur’s death certificate. Ohio was one of many states whose constitution explicitly rejected recognition of same-sex marriages, wherever they were originally celebrated. Obergefell won in federal district court, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals consolidated his case with DeBoer v. Snyder from Michigan and cases from two other states, and overturned them all. The plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision of 2015 made marriage equality the law of the U.S. After the Obergefell victory, April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse were legally married in Michigan and then cross-adopted their children.

Introduction

In addition to setting out the themes of the book, the Introduction tells the story of cancer patient Abigail Burroughs and the case of Abigail Alliance v. von Eschenbach (2008), a suit against the FDA brought by a patient advocacy group founded by Abigail’s father after her death. In this case, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit denied terminally ill patients the right to obtain investigational drugs prior to FDA approval. Using a test established by the Supreme Court in its physician-assisted suicide decision, Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), the DC Circuit held that a right to access unapproved drugs is not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” The Introduction asserts that the Abigail Alliance court’s version of history was incomplete and one-dimensional, as the rest of the book will demonstrate.

CURRENT QUESTIONS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICE ON THE APPLICATION OF LEGISLATION ON ENFORCEMENT PROCEEDINGS: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE TWELFTH ARBITRATION COURT OF APPEAL

This research is a scholarly and practical analysis of the Twelfth Arbitration Court of Appeals’ 2019–2021 consideration of enforcement law disputes and includes selected scholarly judgments based on law enforcement practice. According to statistics, between 2019 and 6 months of 2021, a total of 30,641 cases were heard by the Twelfth Arbitration Court of Appeals, of which disputes related to the application of legislation on enforcement proceedings – 425 cases, which amounted to 1.4% of all cases heard by the court. In 2019, the court considered 14,880 cases, of which disputes related to the application of the legislation on enforcement proceedings – 177 cases, or 1.2% of all cases considered by the court. As for the cases of this category, 25 judicial acts of the courts of first instance were cancelled (changed) by way of appeal, which amounted to 14.1% of the cases of this category. In 2020, the court considered 10,931 cases, including 172 disputes related to application of the legislation on enforcement proceedings, or 1.6% of all cases considered by the court. As for the cases of this category, 18 judicial acts of the first instance courts were cancelled (changed) by way of appeal, which amounted to 10.5% of all cases of this category. In the first half-year of 2021 the court considered 4,830 cases, of which 76 cases (1.6% of all cases considered by the court) were disputes concerning application of the legislation on enforcement proceedings. As for the cases of this category, 12 judicial acts of the courts of first instance were cancelled (changed) by way of appeal, which amounted to 15.8% of all cases of this category.

Ninth Circuit Nursery

Based on statistical and textual analysis of the 148 patent cases heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals from its creation through 1925, this chapter suggests that the appeals judges created a legal environment highly favorable to innovative West Coast enterprises. Their rulings consistently sided with local patent holders and alleged infringers over litigants from outside the circuit. Cases involving only local parties produced more mixed results, as judges sought to mediate disputes among competing regional suppliers, while insulating small proprietors from risks of infringement. Through these means, the appeals court actively shaped competition and influenced the course of innovation in such emergent fields as oil drilling and refining, hydraulic machinery, and food processing. The distinctiveness of Pacific Coast patent law diminished after 1915 under influence of a federal judiciary stacked with protégés of ex-President William Howard Taft, who became Chief Justice in 1921.