The controversy surrounding surrogate motherhood has continued unabated and is now rippling through the scientific community as well. In this interview, Institute director Anne Röthel offers some guide posts to understanding the questions that German family law is faced with because of it in an international context. She also discusses the challenge for lawmakers and the potential role of legal scholarship.

His name comes up several times a day at the Institute. Named after him are The Rabel Journal of Comparative and International Private Law, which he founded; our largest auditorium, Ernst Rabel Hall; and the biennial Ernst Rabel Lecture series and associated festivities in his honour. In 1926, Ernst Rabel became the founding director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign and International Private Law. Now called the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, the Institute is celebrating its centennial this year. Rabel was forced to resign in 1937 and soon emigrated to the United States, but he returned to Germany a few years after the war. Most of what we know about his life is from his output as a legal scholar.
 

Turkey has a long history of various kinds of relationships with Europe, many of which go back to the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor state of Turkey. Today, Turkey is one of the European Union’s largest trading partners. It is also an EU candidate country. Turkish law is one of the most important foreign legal systems with which lawyers in Germany and across the EU regularly deal. However, as Biset Sena Güneş, head of the Centre of Expertise on Turkey at the Institute, points out, “The relevance of German and EU law in Turkey is equally significant.” Güneş’s research focuses on private international law, international civil procedural law, family and succession law, and international trade law in Turkey, Germany, and the EU, viewed from a comparative law perspective.