Foundations: Legal Theory, Economics and Social Sciences

The project aims to place legal subjectivity on a conceptual foundation, to apply it to potentially novel candidates for legal subject status (nature, animals, organisms, robots, artificial intelligence, social collectives, works of art), and to question whether it remains appropriate – now and in the future – to divide the world into subjects and objects. more

Japan and Germany are experiencing demographically driven structural transformation due to an aging population and declining birth rates. We aim to compare the impact of these changes on legal concepts and the role of Japanese and German law in coping with these changes. more

Although siblings are part of the innermost family circle, family law scholars have thus far paid little attention to their legal position. The present interdisciplinary research project aims to both portray and close this gap. more

Part of the self-conception of modernity is that legal ideas are not immutable and always require justification. Our assumption is that these justifications are produced by processes of discourse and can therefore be researched using methods of social science discourse analysis. The aim of this project is to reconstruct the developments which result in certain justifications being embraced or, conversely, rejected in legal discourse communities. In particular, we are interested in determining which events, actors, or processes account for shifts in what is deemed plausible or (un)sayable. more

Among the dominant themes of family sociology is the inquiry regarding the social functions of the family. In contrast to biological functions, this refers to the functions that families have for and within society. Three main functions are often distinguished: economic functions (family as a guarantee of material security), socializing functions (family as a place of education and care), and political or locational functions (social placement through family). In the framework of three sub-projects (financing, care, status), we want to investigate how family law reflects these social functions of family practice in the contemporary world. more