Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law

The Institute was founded in Berlin in 1924 as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) within the framework of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (Kaiser Wilhelm Society). It was re-established in 1949 by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Max Planck Society) as the Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) in Heidelberg. Presently, 69 scholars employed under a joint directorship are engaged in researching basic issues and current developments in the areas of public international law, European law, comparative public law and German public law. Their work serves to promote the formulation and development of positive law as well as its conceptual and theoretical permeation. Attention focuses not only on particular substantive questions, but also on the interplay among public international law, European law and national public law. The Institute has intentionally avoided departmental structuring. Instead, it aims at a scholarly elaboration of legal questions, treating their international, European and national components as a functional unity.

Numerous guests conduct research at the Institute on a wide spectrum of public international law, European law and comparative law topics. Between January 2006 and December 2007, more than 190 foreign scholars from 48 countries completed several-week stays. Long-term guests are involved in the Institute’s programs, especially symposia, lectures and the weekly meetings of the research staff, as well as various staff-led working groups on specific subject areas. A lively exchange exists among these guests, the directors and the research staff.

A key research-tool for the staff and the guests is the library. At the end of 2007, it employed 30 people and held nearly 570,000 volumes. In the areas of public international law, comparative public law and European law, the library is the largest in Europe and one of the most comprehensive in the world.

The Institute has traditionally performed important advisory functions for parliaments, administrative organs and courts concerned with questions of public international law, comparative public law and European law. In particular, the Institute has provided the German Federal Constitutional Court, the German Bundestag and the ministries of the German Federal Government and the Länder governments with information, expert testimony and counsel. The contribution of the Institute to the practical development of public international law, constitutional law and European law occurs, furthermore, through the participation of its members in international conferences as well as their membership in national and international bodies. Additionally, the Institute is directly involved in the creation of legal institutions in several countries, at present particularly in Afghanistan and Sudan.

The Institute is represented by Prof. Rüdiger Wolfrum on the Council of International Law of the German Foreign Ministry. Prof. Jochen Abr. Frowein and Prof. Rudolf Bernhardt were members until 2004 and 2000, respectively. Among the important international posts held by the directors of the Institute in the past decades are the following: Judge, President and Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights (Prof. Bernhardt); Judge on the European Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice (Prof. Hermann Mosler); Member and Vice-President of the European Commission of Human Rights (Prof. Frowein); Judge, Vice-President and current President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Prof. Wolfrum); Judge on the OECD Nuclear Energy Tribunal (Prof. von Bogdandy). In addition, the directors and a number of research staff members perform numerous consultative functions on a temporary basis.

By virtue of its research activities, particularly such major projects as the “Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law” (EPIL), the “Max Planck Commentaries on World Trade Law” and “Ius Publicum Europaeum”, as well as its international guests, the Institute is closely integrated into a dense network of national and international cooperation which is, in part, institutionally anchored. An institutional example is the Minerva Center for Human Rights of the University of Tel Aviv and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Prof. Frowein is Chairperson of the Advisory Board of the Minerva Center, Prof. Wolfrum is Managing Director of the Minerva Foundation, and Prof. von Bogdandy is a Member of the Board. Intensive institutional contacts are maintained with Poland. Through Prof. Wolfrum, the Institute has contributed over the years to the curriculum of the Rhodes Academy for Ocean Law and Policy, which is sponsored by American, Dutch, Icelandic and Greek institutions. Prof. Wolfrum also belongs to the International Max Planck Research School on Maritime Affairs in Hamburg. Besides this, he contributes to an international project of Harvard Law School aimed at codifying the customary law rules of air and missile warfare. As Global Law Professor, Prof. von Bogdandy has established a close institutional contact with New York University School of Law. He regularly holds doctoral-level colloquia in connection with the University of Rome I and the University of Paris II. Together with Prof. Sabino Cassese, he organizes the German-Italian Constitutional Colloquium. Finally, mention ought to be made of the establishment and realization of an LL.M. program on international economic law together with the University of Santiago de Chile and the law faculty of the University of Heidelberg. This program is supervised by Priv.-Doz. Dr. Rainer Grote and Prof. Wolfrum.

 

Research Focus