Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem

Wolfgang Hoffmann- Riem ( born March 4, 1940 in Hannover ) is a German legal scholar and former judge of the Constitutional Court.

Career

Wolfgang Hoffmann- Riem was born into a family of teachers. He had four siblings, one of whom died very young. After graduating from the forest villages Gymnasium in Hamburg, he studied law and in addition also a minor in economics at the Universities of Hamburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Munich and Berkeley. At Berkeley, he obtained the degree of Master of Laws ( LL.M.). He laid in 1964 from his first state exam and received his doctorate in 1968 a doctorate in law. After the second legal state exam in 1970, he worked until 1974 lawyer. After his habilitation in Hamburg ( 1974), he accepted an appointment as Professor of Public Law and Administration at the University of Hamburg. From 1977 to 1979 he was Speaker of the Law Faculty II ( reformed legal education ). Calls to the Universities of Hannover, Frankfurt and Berlin ( FU), he refused.

From 1979 to 1995 he was a director and from July 1998 to December 1999 chairman of the new Board of the Hans Bredow Institute. Since his appointment as judge of the Constitutional Court, he is an honorary member of the Board. 1981-1983 he was Chairman of the Association for the Sociology of Law, 1989-1992 of the German Society for Journalism and Communication Science ( DGPuK ). Since 1988 he is Director of the Research Centre Environmental Law at the University of Hamburg and since 1996 director of the Research Centre Law and Innovation ( Centre for Research in Law and Innovation CERI ) of the University. From 1995 to 1997 he was the Hamburg Senator of Justice in the Senate Voscherau III. During this period he was also Chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee of the German Bundesrat. Between 1999 and 2008, Hoffmann- Riem was a member of the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court. In 2007 he was appointed by the Federal Government to the German member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission of the Council of Europe ). 2009/10 Hoffmann -Riem was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin.

Since mid-2012, Hoffmann- Riem is Professor of jurisprudential innovation research at the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg.

Scientific interests

Hoffmann- Riem aims to transcend the understanding of law as a just standard text-oriented interpretation of science and on their new concept as a problem-solving action and decision science. He is concerned with highlighting the problem-solving capacity of the legal system, and thus the contribution of the law to deal with social problems through the provision of appropriate structures and the use of powerful law to resolve specific conflicts. Both sets according to Hoffmann- Riem insights into the interplay of norms and social reality - the so-called real field of standards - and advance to the effects of legal forms of action that are obtained via a trans-and interdisciplinary access to social, economic, and engineering sciences should.

This basic understanding has given practical expression in the context of its diverse professional stations and fields of activity Hoffmann- Riem. He took part at about the structure of a reformed, as single- designated legal education ( reformed legal education ), which aimed at a stronger linkage between theoretical training with practical and interdisciplinary sought. He has sought the co-operation with the practice through various advising governments, parliaments and organizations as well as participation in various committees. At the same time he ( as, inter alia, in Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard and Melbourne) taken up by a number of research and teaching abroad insights from other jurisdictions. One focus in the analysis of the difficulties and possibilities of legal regulation made ​​for him the media area since the 1980s by the significant technological changes (cable, satellite, digitization, Internet) and accompanying market breaks rich illustrative material for the interplay of legal and social, technological, economic and political developments offered. During this time he led the primarily social science oriented Hans -Bredow- Institute for Radio and Television.

Also, the environmental law served him as an example field -depth insights into the - in the literature variously as "crisis" titled - problems of traditional state regulation and the need for new regulatory approaches. Here he was mainly involved in the interaction of public and private actors ( co administrative law) and in particular the question of what type law is required if the state largely delivers its compliance responsibility to the private sector, but continue to ensure the attainment of public interest objectives. The coined by him term " regulated self-regulation " tries to capture the tension.

Since the early 1990s, he initiated a systematic discussion among researchers and practitioners about the need for reform and possibilities of administrative law. As co-initiator, he won the Heidelberg professor Eberhard Schmidt- Assmann. This discussion is documented in ten volumes of the writings on the reform of administrative law ( Nomos ). From this arose the reform debate - also with Schmidt- Assmann and additionally with Andreas Voßkuhle - realized projects as editor of a systematically organized manual fundamentals of administrative law, whose three volumes from 2006 to 2009 were published in Beck Verlag. At these volumes appeared with 50 other authors. The edited edition appeared in 2012 and 2013 also in Beck Verlag.

Inspired by the continued public criticism of the limited capacity for innovation of German society and the assertion that a cause are the restrictions by law, called Hoffmann- Riem in the 1990s, the creation of a jurisprudential subdiscipline, the jurisprudential innovation research (see the writings on the jurisprudential innovation research by Nomos ). He founded in 1995 the Research Centre Law and Innovation at the University of Hamburg and led research projects on the importance of the right to technological and social innovation in society.

As a Hamburg Senator of Justice, he conceived and initiated a fundamental reform of the Hamburg administration of justice, also known under the keyword " Justice 2000" model was also used for other German states.

Judge at the Federal Constitutional Court

1999, the non-partisan scientists Hoffmann- Riem was elected on the proposal of the SPD by the Federal Council to the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court ( First Senate ). His department included, inter alia, the right to freedom of expression, radio and press freedom, the right to freedom of association, the general personality right, the right of data protection and competition law. Public caused a stir, many prepared by him as rapporteur decisions on freedom of assembly and the relationship between liberty and security in times of threats from terrorists after the attacks of September 11, 2001 ( about the decisions to the "Great bugging ", to listen for the Foreign Trade Act, to preventive telephone surveillance by police right to the dragnet, for online searches for automated license plate detection and data retention ). Without the need for state hazard preparedness, response mistaking the Court insisted on the observance of constitutional guarantees and the limitation of state appropriations, well in advance of hazards in accordance with the principle of proportionality and certainty Bid and compliance with procedural fuses. In these decisions ( example is the called on online searches ), the Court also dealt in detail with the current changes in technology, which has long been considered the scientific interest of Hoffmann- Riem.

Honors

Hoffmann- Riem is awarded the Great Cross of Merit with Star and Sash, which was awarded to him in 2008 by the Federal President.

Publications

A complete list of publications can be found on the website of the University of Hamburg (see below).

A selection of essential writings has been re-published in two anthologies:

• Change of media regulation. Reactions of media law, media policy and media studies, Nomos, Baden Baden 2009, ISBN 3-832-95152-0
• Open jurisprudence. Selected writings and associated analyzes, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2010, ISBN 3-161-50352- X