Friedrich Kessler

Friedrich Kessler ( born August 25, 1901 in Hechingen, Hohenzollern land; † January 21, 1998 in Berkeley ) was a German -American jurist and among other things, a professor at Yale Law School.

Life

Friedrich Kessler was born the son of the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court Council Wilhelm Kessler ( 1879-1952 ). He studied from 1919 to 1922 in Tübingen, Munich and Marburg, then in Berlin, where he. 1928 graduated with his doctorate in law completed. Since 1926 he worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Comparative and International Private Law. From 1931 to 1933 he was a lecturer at the Graduate School of Berlin.

The coming to power of the Nazis represented a decisive turning-point for Friedrich Kessler. On the one hand contradicted the spirit of the totalitarian system, its liberal attitude and complicated its work. But even more significant was the Jewish faith of his wife Eva ( née Jonas ). These circumstances led the couple in July 1934 to emigrate to the United States. Since 1942, Kessler had the American nationality.

Here Kessler was from 1935 to 1938 Assistant Professor at Yale Law School, then from 1938 to 1947 Associate Professor at the University of Chicago School of Law and from 1947 to 1970 professor at Yale Law School. After his retirement in 1970 he worked at the Law School of the University of California, Berkeley. There he lived until his death.

Friedrich Kessler's research focus has been in contract law, where he dealt with issues of trade and regulatory law. In 1944 he published his famous article Contracts of Adhesion -Some Thoughts About Freedom of Contract. In this he described the issue of a contract between two partners with different degrees of bargaining power. After Kessler's opinion such agreements counteracted the embossed in the 18th and 19th century conception of freedom of contract. In addition, such contracts made ​​the evolution from status to law reversed and led to contracts to be a one-handed privilege.

Writings

• Natural Law, Justice and Democracy -Some Reflections on Three Types of Thinking About Law and Justice. 19 Tulane L. Rev. 32, 52, 1944.
• Automobile Dealer Franchises: Vertical Integration by Contract. 66 Yale L. J. 1135, 1957.
• Richard H. Stern: Contract, Competition, and Vertical Integration. 69 Yale L. J. 1, 1959.
• Edith Fine: Culpa in contrahendo, Bargaining in Good Faith, and Freedom of Contract: A Comparative Study. 77 Harv. L. Rev. 401, 1964.