Law Faculty of the University of Vienna

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Law Faculty of the University of Vienna
logo
founding 1402
place Vienna , Austria
dean Paul Oberhammer
Students over 10,000
Employee around 600, including over 40 professors and around 300 members of the academic staff
Website www.juridicum.at

The Law Faculty of the University of Vienna (after one of its buildings informally also: Juridicum ) is the largest institution for legal research and teaching in the German-speaking area and one of the oldest legal faculties in the world. It is considered the best law faculty in Austria and enjoys the highest international reputation.

history

Hans Kelsen , founder of the pure legal theory and architect of the Austrian Federal Constitution

The study of law was already provided for in the founding documents of the University of Vienna from 1365 and 1385, but teaching was not started until 1402 and was initially limited to canon law . After several failed attempts, Roman law was added in 1494 . It was not until the Theresian study reform in 1753 that the range of subjects was expanded; the curriculum developed by Franz von Zeiller in 1810 introduced Austrian private law as a separate subject for the first time . The dominant influence of natural law was broken with the study reform enacted by Minister of Education Leo von Thun-Hohenstein in 1850, with the emphasis being placed on the legal history subjects . This continued to decline in the subsequent study reforms.

The increase in the number of subjects from the 18th century onwards meant that non-legal subjects, such as political science , economics , but also statistics , were increasingly located in the faculty, which from 1850 onwards as the "Faculty of Law and Political Science" was designated.

In 1975 it was divided into a law and a social and economic faculty; the latter was subsequently divided several times; today, the Faculty of Economics and Computer Science as well as parts of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna go back to them.

The faculty was shaped in a sustainable manner by greats such as Karl Anton von Martini , Franz von Zeiller , Joseph Unger , Julius Glaser , Anton Menger , Georg Jellinek , Franz Klein , Armin Ehrenzweig , Heinrich Klang , Hans Kelsen , Adolf Julius Merkl , Winfried Kralik , Hans W. Fasching , Franz Bydklinski , Robert Walter , Winfried Platzgummer , Manfred Burgstaller , Helmut Koziol , Rudolf Welser and Walter Rechberger .

organization

Paul Oberhammer has been the Dean of the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna since 2014 .

The faculty currently has twelve institutes:

In addition, the faculty has a number of other research institutions and research platforms, and non-university institutions also work closely with the faculty. The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights and the inter-faculty Institute for Ethics and Law in Medicine should be mentioned here in particular. The Austrian Center for Law Enforcmement Studies (ALES), founded in 2011, aims to improve the networking of police and judicial work in Austria. The research center for legal sources established in 2016 works together with the Austrian legal history commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Curriculum

The study of law at the University of Vienna is divided into three sections: an introductory section (which, in addition to introductory lectures in the most important legal-dogmatic subjects, also contains the legal history subjects and the fundamentals of legal philosophy), a judicial section (at the center of which is an interdisciplinary examination from civil and corporate law) as well as a political science section (with an interdisciplinary examination from constitutional and administrative law). The course lasts at least four years and is completed (since 1975) with the degree of a Magister or (since 1993) a Magistra in Law, which is a prerequisite for all traditional legal professions. This can be followed by a doctoral degree in law (with a dissertation ) and a postgraduate degree ( LL.M. degree ).

Rankings

The law faculty of the University of Vienna is considered to be the best in Austria and one of the most respected law faculties in Europe. In the Times Higher Education World University Ranking , the University of Vienna took 32nd place in Europe and 73rd place worldwide in 2019. In 2018, in the QS World University Ranking , it was ranked 33rd in Europe in law and among the top 100 universities worldwide.

main building

Juridicum
Construction site in 1978

The law faculty was initially housed in various buildings of the Old University in the Stubenviertel, and from 1884 in the main building on Franzensring (today Universitätsring ). The sharp increase in the number of students and the associated increase in chairs in the 1960s led to the call for a separate building for the faculty; Constitutional lawyer Günther Winkler was appointed as the building commissioner, and he succeeded in securing a building site in the city center (Schottenbastei 10–16) for the faculty.

In 1970 the architect Ernst Hiesmayr was commissioned to plan the Juridicum. After about a year of unsuccessful attempts to find a solution on the limited property that could satisfy the faculty's need for space, he finally decided on a "bridge construction": four towers, each paired in pairs, were built (in which, among other things, a lift, Toilets and supply systems are housed), over which a framework construction made of steel was built. All floors were suspended from this construction. The individual floors are not built up from below, but hang down from above. This made it possible to accommodate more floors in the same space and at the same time to be able to build a very free ground floor (without columns and girders). The hanging columns are run through by warm water and thus warm the building.

The building can be seen as “ postmodern ” insofar as the hanging construction is not emphasized, but rather concealed by the filigree design of the facade. "One only suspects that the four upper storeys, which protrude widely at the front of the building, should not only protrude, the overhang is far too large for that."

Construction began in 1974 and was completed in 1984, so that the faculty was able to move to the Haus am Ring after exactly one hundred years. However, the Juridicum could not accommodate the entire faculty at the beginning. Currently, it houses the Institute for European Law , International Law and Comparative Law , for legal and constitutional history , for heads of state and administrative law , for corporate and business law as well as civil law , furthermore most of the departmental library law.

The institutes for labor and social law , for financial law , for legal philosophy including religious and cultural law , for Roman law and ancient legal history and for civil procedural law have also been located in a building from the Wilhelminian era at Schenkenstrasse 8-10 not far from the Juridicum since 2006 the Institute for Innovation and Digitization in Law is located there. In 2014, the Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology moved from Schenkenstraße 8-10 to Schenkenstraße 4. The Dean's Office and StudyServiceCenter moved to Renngasse 6–8 in 2018.

Graduates (selection)

Among the graduates of the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna are numerous prominent personalities from science and politics. For example, the five lawyers among the previous Federal Presidents of the Republic of Austria are all graduates of the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna. In addition, since 1918 the faculty has produced eight Federal Chancellors and 21 Justice Ministers .

Karl Anton von Martini , important thinker of natural law and pioneer of the general civil code
Franz von Zeiller , father of the General Civil Code
Joseph Unger , father of the historical law school in Austria
Franz Klein , creator of the Austrian Code of Civil Procedure
Karl Renner , founding father of the First and Second Republic
Hans Kelsen , father of pure legal theory and architect of the Austrian federal constitution
Engelbert Dollfuß , founder of the Austro-Fascist corporate state and dictatorial ruling Federal Chancellor from 1932 to 1934
Bruno Kreisky, Federal Chancellor of the Republic of Austria from 1970 to 1983
Heinz Fischer , Federal President of the Republic of Austria from 2004 to 2016

Web links

Commons : Law Faculty of the University of Vienna  - collection of images, videos and audio files

proof

  1. ↑ a b World University Rankings 2019 by subject: law. October 8, 2018, accessed February 9, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b Law. February 22, 2018, accessed February 9, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Dean's office. Retrieved February 9, 2019 .
  4. ^ Start of the first police and justice research center in Austria ( Memento from January 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Press release of the University of Vienna from October 24, 2011.
  5. ↑ The academic degree “Magistra” was first introduced with Federal Law Gazette No. 523/1993 . Graduates who were previously awarded academic degrees in the male form have since been allowed to use them in the female form.
  6. ^ Ernst Hiesmayr, Juridicum University of Vienna. Ernst Löcker Verlag Vienna 1996, p. 10.

Coordinates: 48 ° 12 '50.1 "  N , 16 ° 21' 54.3"  E