Current News

The recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments is sometimes subject to the condition that the state in which the judgment was rendered would recognize and enforce the judgment if the situation were reversed. Such a condition makes the enforcement of private rights dependent on state behaviour. In his recently published dissertation, Lech Kopczyński, former research assistant at the Institute, analyses the question of whether reciprocity requirements of this nature are consistent with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). more

Our world of open borders, growing migration, and cross-border movement of goods and services poses challenges for the law. One answer to these challenges is legal harmonization. Today, internationally uniform rules and principles can be found in many areas of private law. In the posthumously published work “Uniform Law”, Jürgen Basedow undertakes a comprehensive and cross-sectoral analysis of the general framework of uniform law. more

The Zeitschrift für Japanisches Recht/Journal of Japanese Law (ZJapanR/J.Japan.L.) is the only publication in the world outside Japan that regularly provides coverage and analysis of current developments in all areas of Japanese law in Western European languages. Issue 57 (2024) contains major articles on topics in private law, business law, and comparative law, complemented by overviews of recent court decisions. more

Dorota Nowacka is a doctoral candidate at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. In the context of an exchange program between EUI and Max Planck Law, she is conducting research at the Institute in September and October 2024. With her wide-ranging and internationally oriented background, the Polish legal scholar has found ideal research conditions here in Hamburg. more

Director at the Institute Anne Röthel has been invited to join a non-partisan initiative to improve the readiness and capabilities of the state. The group, made up of about 50 experts in government, policy and administration, commerce, education, and the sciences, was convened under the aegis of Federal President Steinmeier and tasked with developing more effective ways to institute reforms. The commission’s report is expected within the next 12 months. more

Senior research fellow at the Institute Antonia Sommerfeld and former visiting fellow at the Institute Verónica Ruiz Abou-Nigm have won the annual prize, a joint award of IE Law School and the international law firm Ontier. The award recognizes them for their paper “Circular Fashion and Legal Design: Weaving Circular Economy Threads into International Contracts”. more

If you are an early career researcher (PhD student or PostDoc up to five years after award of PhD) in family law and interested in getting to know other young family lawyers and presenting the main theses of your current research, we encourage you to submit an abstract for our Family Law Early Career Colloquium, to be held on 5th and 6th June 2025 in Hamburg/Germany. more