Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde#

Biography#

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde is one of Germany's foremost legal philosophers and a former judge on the Constitutional Court. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Freiburg and the author of more than 20 books and 80 articles.

Professor Böckenförde received a PhD in law in Münster in 1953. In the same year he also received a PhD in history from the University of Munich. In 1964 he made his postdoctoral habilitation with thesis "The power of organisation in the purview of the government. A survey on constitutional law in the Federal Republic of Germany". He became Professor of Public Law, Constitutional History, Legal History and Philosophy of Law at the University of Heidelbergin. In 1969, he moved to the University of Bielefeld, and in 1977 to the University of Freiburg, where he remained until his retirement.

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde served as a member of the second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court (1982-1996). Into his tenure fall several path-breaking decisions for the Federal Republic of Germany, including decisions pertaining to the deployment of missiles, to the law of political parties, and to the legal regulation of abortion. After German unification, professor Böckenförde was a member of the Special Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Reform.

Professor Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde has received numerous awards for his academic and public service commitments, among them Honorary Doctorates from the Faculties of Catholic Theology of theUniversity of Bochum (1999) and of Tübingen University (2005), from the Law Schools of Bielefeld University (1999), of the University of Münster (2001) and of the University of Basel(1987). He also received the Reuchlin Award of the City of Pforzheim (1978), the Guardini Award of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria (2004) and the Hannah-Arendt Award for Political Thought (2004).