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2 Vienna Online J. on Int'l Const. L. 2 (2008)

handle is hein.journals/vioincl2 and id is 1 raw text is: 





* PREFACE



                      Claudia Fuchs & Konrad Lachmayer

        World Bank Immunity, European Welfare State
              and Same-sex partnerships in Austria


   Welcome to the year 2008! With the New Year the ICL-Journal is starting its
second volume. As the title indicates, the issue 1/2008 contains analyses of a
number of constitutional matters.
   The first article from Gerhard Thallinger deals with The possible role of
domestic courts in enhancing World Bank accountability. The article deals with
victims claiming to suffer damage or harm from a World Bank project and
examines the possibilities of how to pursue remedies on the national level and
how to ask for a request of investigation before the World Bank's Inspection
Panel. Thereby, the article analyzes to what extent the establishment of the
Inspection Panel has an impact on the scope of the Bank's jurisdictional immunity
as granted by domestic courts.
   The second article discusses the The Concept of Solidarity in National and
European Law: The Welfare State and the European Social Model. Juliane
Ottmann is transferring the model of social solidarity from the nation state to
the European Union. As a starting point, she presents different perspectives of
solidarity from a moral, legal, sociological and economic point of view. The
developments on the European level are significant. The article is founding these
developments with a theoretical basis, discussing different approaches like Rawls'
veil of ignorance, Frangois Ewald's Contrat de Solidarit or Durkheim's concept
of organic solidarity.
   Starting with the new volume 2008, the ICL-Journal aims to outline the basic
facts of Austrian constitutional law. As a first step, Ronald Faber gives an
introduction to the normative concept of the Austrian constitutional court. The
author presents the organisation of the constitutional court as well as its
reviewing powers. He also deals with the ongoing reform process of the Austrian
constitution and its impact on the jurisdiction of the constitutional court.
   In the rubric Austrian constitutional developments, this issue puts the focus
on constitutional court decisions regarding same-sex partnerships. In the last
decade a major shift in the law on same-sex partnerships and enabling same-sex
marriage is reflecting a new tolerance in Europe as a whole. The situation in
Austria is still at an intermediate stage wedged between a rather conservative
approach of discriminating against same-sex partnerships on the one hand side
and a more liberal point of view regarding the tolerance of same-sex
partnerships. For this reason, the case-law of the Austrian constitutional court is
of particular importance in this process. Hence a number of recent decisions have
been selected for publication in this journal and are presented and discussed by
Patrick Segalla, Graciela Faffelberger, Stefan Huber and Christoph Bezemek.


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1/2008, 2

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