German Draft Research Articles

Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment: Producer Responsibility: A Review of Initiatives in the EC

Failure of the EU Priority Waste Streams Programme on waste from electrical and electronic equipment; the German draft ordinance on the disposal of information technology equipment; the Dutch draft ordinance; the proposed Swedish Act concerning Recycling and Producer Responsibility with respect to end-of-life electrical and electronic equipment; preparatory steps with a view to legislative proposals in Austria, France, Finland and Denmark; the position in the remaining EU Member States; conclusion that the EU should take a lead with a view to harmonising future requirements.

Uncertainty of Parameter Estimation

A procedure is proposed for expressing and handling uncertainties of parameter estimation. It is based on the least squares method and is conform with the German draft standard DIN 1319 Part 4 for the treatment of uncertainties in the evaluation of measurements. The procedure is applicable to many parameter estimation tasks, is quite simple on the level of differential and matrix calculus and is well-suited for computer-aided measurements and estimations. Its consistency allows successive evaluations to be made. All physical quantities in question, e.g. measured and influence quantities as well as the parameters to be estimated are regarded as random variables. The covariance matrix of the estimation of their true (expectation) values serves as a measure of the uncertainty.

East German draft treaty

East German draft treaty

Toward a Contemporary Concept of Criminal Justice

The state of our “criminal law” in 1905 was described by William H. Taft as “a disgrace to our civilization”. This state had not changed much almost half a century later, when Justice Frankfurter quoted Mr. Taft's statement. Several major modern reform projects formulated since 1952 introduced some noteworthy modifications. I have in mind particularly the American Law Institute Model Penal Code, on the one hand, and the German Draft of a Penal Code, both of 1962, on the other. In the former I should like to draw attention to the serious attempt at a systematization of punishment scales, and in the latter to the effort at a systematic structuring of the “guilt principle”. The German Draft incorporated results of various revisions introduced since the collapse of the National Socialist régime, by either statutory or judicial legislation—revisions born out of the growing concern in Germany with “guilt”. Prominent among these revisions, of course, is adoption of the defence of “error of law” of ancient origin, derived from biblical, talmudic and canon law teaching. Nevertheless, these two projects have but touched the surface of the profound problems that are involved in formulating truly modern penal legislation.