Prof. Dr. Harald Baum

Affiliate, former Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Centre of Expertise on Japan
Co-Supervising Editor of the Zeitschrift für Japanisches Recht / Journal of Japanese Law
Coordinator of the academic exchange with the University of Kyoto


Main Fields of Research

Japanese Law; German and European Commercial and Economic Law with emphasis on Corporate and Financial Law; Private International Law and Procedure; Comparative Law

Vita

Harald Baum is the founder of the Centre of Expertise on Japan, which he headed from 1985 to 2020. After studying law in Hamburg and Freiburg, he initially practiced as a lawyer. He received his doctorate in 1984, then became a senior research fellow at the Institute in 1985; since then, he has developed his areas of focus in Japanese law, German and European commercial and economic law, and private international law and procedure. After completing his post-doctoral thesis in 2004, Baum was a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo in 2005 and at the Université Jean Moulin Lyon III in 2015. He is currently a Professor at the University of Hamburg.

Baum founded the Journal of Japanese Law in 1996 and served as the managing editor until 2020, subsequent to which he has been a co-managing editor. He is also the coordinator of academic exchange with the University of Kyoto. Baum is also active as the Vice-President of the German-Japanese Association of Jurists, as a Member of the Advisory Board of the Australian Network of Japanese Law (ANJeL), as a Research Associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute in Brussels, and as a member of the Académie Internationale de Droit Comparé, the Association of Professors in Civil Law, the European Law Institute, and the German Society of International Law, among other institutions.

Harald Baum has received honours including the 2019 Eugen and Ilse Seibold Prize of the DFG 2019 for many years of successful dedication to academic and cultural exchange between Germany and Japan and the 2019 Japanese Foreign Minister’s Commendation for efforts towards promoting mutual understanding and goodwill between Japan and German.

The following Festschrift was published In his honour in 2012:
Moritz Bälz, Marc Dernauer, Christopher Heath, Anja Petersen-Padberg (eds.), Business Law in Japan: Cases and Comments. Intellectual Property, Civil, Commercial and International Private Law. Writings in Honour of Harald Baum, Alphen aan den Rijn 2012 (Kluwer Law International) XXIV, 824 pp.

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