Current News

Issue 54 (2022) of the Journal of Japanese Law (ZJapanR) opens with three articles on the topic of LGBT+ rights in Japan, an area that is also the subject of a conference report. Other contributions examine Japan’s “unequal treaties” and current questions regarding corporate governance. The issue also features extensive coverage of the 2022 symposium that was held in honour of the Journal’s founder, Harald Baum. more

In November of 2022, Dörthe Engelcke, senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, was admitted to the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA). She was one of eleven early-career scholars selected for membership last year. more

Human swarms arise and take shape mainly on the major internet platforms. This book, edited by Ben Köhler and Stefan Korch, senior research fellows at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, addresses the legal challenges posed by human swarms and by the phenomenon of emergent collectivity, for example in relation to shitstorms, swarm trading, and wildcat strikes. more

In the space of only a few days, Susanne Flessner and Axel Flessner passed away at the respective ages of 90 and 86. Both worked in the field of private international law and European private law, and both were closely associated with the Hamburg Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law. Indeed their relationship with each other had an Institute dimension – they started at the Institute almost simultaneously in 1961 and left at almost the same time twenty years later. more

Konrad Duden, research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, has been awarded the 2022 Kurt Hartwig Siemers Prize for his post-doctoral dissertation. The honour bestowed by the Hamburgische Wissenschaftliche Stiftung and the Edmund Siemers-Stiftung is in recognition of Duden’s work on the influence of digitalization on property law and its private law consequences. more

On 7 December 2022, the Law Faculty of the University of Chile awarded the title of Doctor honoris causa to Reinhard Zimmermann, Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law. The honour was bestowed in recognition of Zimmermann’s lifelong academic work and his far-reaching influence on legal scholarship in Latin America and Chile. more

Konrad Duden, senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, will join the law faculty at Leipzig, where he has been called to take over the professorship for civil and private international law at the start of the year 2023. On 11 November 2022, Duden also won an award from the Deutsche Stiftung für Recht und Informatik (German foundation for law and informatics – the DSRI) for his habilitation. more