In the study of comparative law and legal systems, a problem of focus and perspective presents itself. Comparative scholars often examine the “important” cases decided by appellate courts of foreign nations and the writings of their most important scholars. In Anglo-American nations, jurists are taught in law school, and then in the practice of law to look for authoritative texts, which are often the words of appellate court judges who set precedent. The results of these searches for the authoritative, both in national as well as comparative legal research, may be that scholars do not give enough attention to the average and the pedestrian, but rather focus upon the exceptional, the appellate, the influential and the newsworthy.

The aim of this article is to analyze the European approach to the protection of trafficking victims and evaluate its potential for success. In light of the Italian experience, I will try to demonstrate that the protection offered by European law is too narrow, and therefore bound to be ineffective. I also endeavor to show that offering protection to all trafficked persons, independent of their willingness to cooperate with the justice authorities, is necessary in order to protect the victims human rights, and also to ensure the full implementation of criminal law.

Democracy thrives in that narrow space that divides order from chaos; it is a balance between the order of law and government with the necessary disorder dissent and protest create. The year 2008 marked the 40th anniversary of 1968–when that balance momentarily appeared to shatter in West Germany. The young democracy was still defining itself, shaping its new identity while coming to terms with its past. In 1968 this new government of the old guard, obsessed with order, clashed with a new generation that saw many of the faults of Germany's Nazi past masquerading as democracy. But the new government was built upon the old authoritarian superstructure. The youth of the 60s eventually became the establishment, and now they are turning over power to a new generation. Although the torch has been passed from Clinton and Schroeder to Obama and Merkel, the legacy of the students of 1968 continues to echo through modern times. In December of 2008, the shooting of a teenage boy by Greek police ignited violent protests that rapidly spread across the country. Like the protests of 1968, the purpose of the protests in Greece was greater than the event that sparked it. The shooting tapped a deeper well of unrest. Like the protests of 1968, the goal of the protesters was unclear, but the passion was unmistakable.

On November 29, 1967, Commune I member Fritz Teufel had to face his second day in a West Berlin courtroom. Teufel was charged with breaching the public peace for allegedly hurling stones at policemen during a demonstration against the visit of the Shah of Persia on June 2, 1967– the same event during which West German police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras killed twenty-six-year-old student Benno Ohnesorg with a shot to the head. When the judge entered the courtroom that day in late November, Teufel sat in the same spot in which only one week before Kurras had been acquitted of involuntary manslaughter for his actions on June 2. As everybody stood up, Teufel alone remained in his seat, leisurely browsing through the day's newspaper. Only after the judge repeatedly urged him to stand up, stop his defiant behavior, and pay his respects to the court did Teufel slowly rise to his feet and utter a seemingly spontaneous and sardonic remark, which became a rallying cry for the mocking and disrespectful attitude of the student movement against West German authorities: “Well, if it's gonna help establish the truth…” (Naja, wenn's der Wahrheitsfindung dient).

The problem with our memories is that our imagination constantly interferes. Friedrich Dürrenmatt contended that whether something would have been possible is sometimes more important in memory than that which was real, so that past possibility becomes confused with past reality. Put another way, that which was possible gradually encroaches on that which was real, until years later memory accepts the synthesis as fact. Must, then, the designation “non-fiction” for any memoir not be a contradiction in terms? What I was in 1968 is not quite what I wish I had been, and the temptation is strong to impute motivations in retrospect that were not present at the time. The fact that it has been forty years since my experiences and that I have never written them down before, renders any attempt at chronological accuracy futile. Thus, I am grateful to the editors of the German Law Journal for heartily accepting this subjective, rather than an historically objective, report from the ground.

The excessive availability of conventional weapons, small arms and light weapons (SALW) in particular, and the unrestricted trade which make them available raise serious security, humanitarian and social-economic concerns of international nature. These weapons are the major tools of contemporary armed conflicts, abuses of human rights and humanitarian norms, violence, terrorism and criminality. This has led many, including the former United Nations (UN) Chief, Kofi Annan, to believe that these arms are the real weapons of mass destruction of our time, causing half a million deaths annually. This is not to suggest that conventional weapons are not also useful for good causes. They are necessary for maintaining law and order and self-defence purposes. However, their proliferation and unrestricted transfer across borders, especially from the industrialized world to developing (and conflict-torn) countries, have not yet been addressed. In other words, their availability and supply have not been subjected to proper (legal and enforceable) restrictions.