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Steven Less

Dr. iur., Esq., Senior Research Fellow 1986-2018

Academic Career until 2018

Steven Less was the editor-in-chief of the MPI’s online Research Paper Series, published by SSRN 2015-2018. Before that, he was the managing editor of the Institute’s meanwhile discontinued semi-annual bibliography of public international law (PIL) (1991-2017). He belongs to both the New Jersey and New York bar associations. He worked for a general practice law firm in New Jersey before coming to Heidelberg on a DAAD grant (1980-1981). He received his undergraduate degree (B.A.) in history from Middlebury College in Vermont (1975). After completing his law degree (J.D.) at Seton Hall University School of Law in New Jersey (1979), he obtained a doctorate (Dr. iur.) at Heidelberg University with support from a Max Planck Society fellowship in 1987. His comparative law doctoral thesis on involuntary commitment to psychiatric institutions in the United States and Germany was published in the series “Beiträge und Materialien aus dem Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches und internationales Strafrecht Freiburg”. He has taught for many years as an adjunct lecturer for the law faculty at Heidelberg University as well as the Heidelberg Center for American Studies, and continues to offer a three-semester introduction to Anglo-American law and legal terminology, covering American constitutional law. He has also lectured on Anglo-American civil law in this course series. In addition, he has taught international law and international human rights at Schiller International University in Heidelberg and co-taught interdisciplinary seminars at the HCA in law and politics (on the after-effects of 9/11) as well as in law and history (on race and racism).