Convergence and Diversity in Private and Public Law


5 Colum. J. Eur. L. 181 (1999)

Gerald L Neuman. 

Mark J. Roe.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM

At the end of the Twentieth Century, Germany and the United States represent two of the most powerful economies in the world and two of the most influential constitutional systems. The economies are linked in the dynamics of international trade, and the constitutions share in a wider culture of Western constitutional thought. Their solutions to common problems, however, sometimes differ, justifying inquiry into the causes of those divergences and the prospects for their continuation. Two important examples of current divergence may be found in the structure of corporate governance and the constitutional law of equality.

The investigations of those issues published here reflect the third joint symposium held by the faculties of Columbia Law School and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitilt in Frankfurt am Main. The authors and other discussants met together in May 1998 in Frankfurt, and the revised versions of the papers incorporate insights gained in those discussions.