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This essay is an outcome of the pandemic, which in 2020 pushed me to reorient a sabbatical to studies of German legal culture. It combines an autobiographical background in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s with a longstanding interest in legal history, legal pluralism, legal culture, and gender and law. These fields are addressed from different angles, which demonstrate considerable changes of political and legal systems and cultures in German (speaking) areas. Within the last half century, a culture of silence and shame has attempted to come to terms with a patriarchal past, while also combining political cultures and economies from two parts of Germany, which merged a generation ago, and are still very diverse.

This article discusses historical and symbolic perceptions and representations of justice. In a Western context justice has for millennia been depicted as female and for a long period also as divine. In this article these symbols are interconnected with changing, complex and pluralist understandings of beauty, health and justice. Both justice and beauty are related, as are beauty and health. Beauty has a historical value, and is used for political, commercial, health, artistic and many other purposes. Ideals of beauty and attempts to live up to them can be damaging – historically especially for women. Beauty has been considered unjust, but it may also contribute to fairness, justice and wellbeing. Globalisations and technology have led to pluralisation and uncertainty about what is just, beautiful, and healthy, but they have in no way made these values obsolete.

This essay is an attempt to bring together experiences and research by the author related to the fields of gender, the Arctic, especially Greenland, and China. Comparison of these very divergent and different parts of the world in scale, population and size of the economy as well as legal and normative cultures is hardly possible. Nonetheless a gendered – and personal – perspective reveal similarities in development especially in relation to rapid social change, urbanization, globalization and climate and environmental challenges. The use of the essay as a genre has seemed to me particularly apt for this purpose of looking for links and similarities.

This chapter takes the multiculturalization of the legal auditoria as a starting point, and starts out with a historical overview from the perspective of the University of Copenhagen. Due to lack of studies in the field, it is to a large degree based on the personal experience of the author in teaching multicultural classes (international and Erasmus students as well as immigrant Muslim students in Denmark and elsewhere) and comparing ‘extraordinary places’ such as Africa, Greenland, and China. At least at the Faculty of Law of the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), internationalization and globalization may have led to a decreased interest in comparative law among ordinary students, while it has at the same time brought new differences into the classroom. Comparative law has been linked to legal culture in (parts of) the Nordic area, and the contextual approach and a need for a more flexible methodology has been emphasized. The growth of students with an immigrant background and an experience with Muslim legal culture(s) is clearly felt at UCPH in the twenty-first century, and it might give rise to new legal and comparative questions and demands, which are at present unmet, as well as to sensitivities, which have been felt in politics and (symbolic) laws. The article suggests that a ‘pop up’ approach to concrete comparative issues, fields and topics may be one amongst other ways to secure future interest in comparative law amongst students.

Amphiphilic polycations are an alternative to biocides but also toxic to mammalian cells. Antimicrobially active hydrophilic polycations based on 1,4-dibromo-2-butene and tetramethyl-1,3-propanediamine named PBI are not hemotoxic for porcine red blood cells with a hemocytotoxicity (HC50) of more than 40,000 μg · mL(-1). They are quickly killing bacterial cells at their MIC (minimal inhibitory concentration). The highest found selectivity HC50 /MIC is more than 20,000 for S. epidermidis. Investigations on sequentially prepared PBIs with defined molecular weight Mn and tailored end groups revealed that there is a dependence of antimicrobial activity and selectivity on Mn and nature of the end groups.

Amphiphilic polycations are an alternative to biocides but also toxic to mammalian cells. Antimicrobially active hydrophilic polycations based on 1,4-dibromo-2-butene and tetramethyl-1,3-propanediamine named PBI are not hemotoxic for porcine red blood cells with a hemocytotoxicity (HC50) of more than 40,000 μg · mL(-1). They are quickly killing bacterial cells at their MIC (minimal inhibitory concentration). The highest found selectivity HC50 /MIC is more than 20,000 for S. epidermidis. Investigations on sequentially prepared PBIs with defined molecular weight Mn and tailored end groups revealed that there is a dependence of antimicrobial activity and selectivity on Mn and nature of the end groups.

Serine phosphorylation of signal transducers and activators of transcription (STAT) 1 and 3 modulates their DNA-binding capacity and/or transcriptional activity. Earlier we suggested that STAT5a functional capacity could be influenced by the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. In the present study, we have analyzed the interactions between STAT5a and the MAPKs, extracellular signal-regulated kinases ERK1 and ERK2. GH treatment of Chinese hamster ovary cells stably transfected with the GH receptor (CHOA cells) led to rapid and transient activation of both STAT5a and ERK1 and ERK2. Pretreatment of cells with colchicine, which inhibits tubulin polymerization, did not inhibit STAT5a translocation to the nucleus and ERK1/2 activation. In vitro precipitation with a glutathione-S-transferase-fusion protein containing the C-terminal transactivation domain of STAT5a showed GH-regulated association of ERK1/2 with the fusion protein, while this was not seen when serine 780 in STAT5a was changed to alanine. In vitro phosphorylation of the glutathione-S-transferase-fusion proteins using active ERK only worked when the fusion protein contained wild-type STAT5a sequence. The same experiment, performed with full-length wild-type STAT5a and the corresponding S780A mutant, showed that serine 780 is the only substrate in full-length STAT5a for active ERK. In coimmunoprecipitation experiments, larger amounts of STAT5a-ERK1/2 complexes were detected in cytosol from untreated CHOA cells than in cytosol from GH-treated cells, suggesting the presence of preformed STAT5a-ERK1/2 complexes in unstimulated cells. Transfection experiments with COS cells showed that kinase-inactive ERK1 decreased GH stimulation of STAT5-regulated reporter gene expression. These observations show, for the first time, direct physical interaction between ERK and STAT5a and also clearly identify serine 780 as a target for ERK. Furthermore, it is also established that serine phosphorylation of STAT5a transactivation domain, via the MAPK pathway, is a means of modifying GH-induced transcriptional activation.

HC11 mouse mammary epithelial cells are capable of differentiating in vitro. By growing cells in EGF-containing medium, and upon confluence withdrawing EGF, these cells become competent at responding to lactogenic hormone treatment and expressing milk proteins. We found that during proliferation and at confluence STAT5A and STAT5B proteins were expressed at equal levels or with STAT5B being predominant. In competent cells, expression levels of STAT5A and STAT5B increased markedly with STAT5A now being the predominant form, an expression pattern resembling the expression patterns of STAT5 proteins seen during mammary gland differentiation in vivo. This suggests that EGF has a suppressive effect on STAT5 expression, in particular, STAT5A, which we conclude to be mediated through ras/raf/MEK/MAPK pathway and to a lesser extent through a PI3-kinase-mediated pathway. Furthermore, we also found that EGF regulated a nuclear phosphatase capable of dephosphorylating tyrosine-phosphorylated STAT5. Our data show that HC11 cells have retained the expression patterns of STAT5 proteins seen in vivo. This makes HC11 cells useful for studying molecular mechanisms regulating expression of STAT factors and their participation in differentiation processes of mammary gland.

(1998). On Law and Music. The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law: Vol. 30, No. 41, pp. 75-87.

The article analyses the notions of legal culture and monumental architecture. It is presumed that symbolic monumental architecture can be interpreted as legal cultural representations and thereby illustrate legal cultural changes. It is exemplified by the Opera and the debates on grand-mosques in Copenhagen. The claim of the article is that these buildings, the opera and the grand-mosques, can be understood as the growth of a post-national marked based legal culture in contrast to a post-national religious based legal culture.

These issues suggest that we need to study carefully the technical and procedural details by which customary law systems operate to identify systems that are likely to promote sustainable development. With this objective in mind, we return to the examples of customary law in Hawaii, Northern Norway and Greenland. To what extent is the customary law in these areas exhibiting the characteristics needed to maintain sustainable resources management? Hawaii: symbolism over substance Native Hawaiians have acted to protect their customary rights to gather and hunt on privately owned property through the Hawaiian court system. Their efforts have achieved notable success in the form of the Hawaii Supreme Court's recognition of a state-wide right of native Hawaiians to hunt, fish and gather on all property other than property that has been developed for private residential use. These successes have undoubtedly strengthened the self-image of the largest indigenous group living in the United States. However, the victories of the native Hawaiians have proven to be more symbolic than substantive. The ability of native Hawaiians to maintain their ethnic identity has been threatened by a decision of the United States Supreme Court in Rice v. Cayetano . The court invalidated a Hawaii statute that allowed only descendants of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands before 1778 to vote for trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

For many nations, a key challenge is how to achieve sustainable development without a return to centralized planning. Using case studies from Greenland, Hawaii and northern Norway, this 2006 book examines whether 'bottom-up' systems such as customary law can play a critical role in achieving viable systems for managing natural resources. Customary law consists of underlying social norms that may become the acknowledged law of the land. The key to determining whether a custom constitutes customary law is whether the public acts as if the observance of the custom is legally obligated. While the use of customary law does not always produce sustainability, the study of customary methods of resource management can produce valuable insights into methods of managing resources in a sustainable way.

Et analytisk rids af dansk samfundsforsknings historie i Grønland med vægt på forskningens aktører, dens idehistorie og dens arenaer set i lyset af deres institutionelle og politisk-nationale forudsætninger og sammenhænge. An analysis of the history of Danish social science research in Greenland focusing on the actors, the history of ideas, and the arenas in their institutional and politico-national contexts.

Demokrati er hidtil især blevet forstået og praktiseret inden for en national ramme. I det 21. århundrede bliver det en udfordring at udvide rammen for demokratiet til en global ramme – verdenssamfundet, og at udvikle demokratiske former, holdninger og handlinger, der fungerer inden for en sådan ramme. Det nationale og lokale demokrati fungerer i dag som et partikulært system, der ofte primært varetager egne lokale interesser. Regulering af deltagelse og statsborgerskab har konsekvenser for adgangen til deltagelse i det lokale/nationale fællesskab og fungerer ofte ekskluderende. Demokratiske holdninger og praksis kan imidlertid findes også i sammenhænge og institutioner, der ikke i sig selv er demokratisk konstituerede, som familier, religioner og skoler. Gensidig afhængighed på globalt plan fordrer mere deltagelse og ansvar i den globale beslutningsproces. FN bruger begrebet ‘democratic governance’ for at fokusere på processen og indholdet, frem for på institutionen.