Rudolf Bernhardt

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Rudolf Bernhardt (born April 29, 1925 in Kassel ) is a German international lawyer and former President of the European Court of Human Rights .

Life

After he returned from a Soviet captivity , Bernhardt began studying law at the University of Frankfurt . There he met the prominent international lawyer Hermann Mosler , who brought him to the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in 1954 as a research assistant .

With a dissertation on the conclusion of international agreements in the state, he received his doctorate in law in 1955 . The subject was the competences of the federal and state governments to conclude international treaties . From 1959 Bernhardt studied at the Harvard Law School in Cambridge , and in 1962 he completed his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg . His habilitation thesis was entitled "The Interpretation of International Treaties".

Initially, he worked as a private lecturer in Heidelberg, but as early as 1965 he moved to the University of Frankfurt as a full professor of public law , which meant that his engagement at the Max Planck Institute ended for the time being. But five years later he returned to Neckarstadt when he accepted a call to the law faculty of Heidelberg University. At the same time Bernhardt took over the management of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law - together with Hermann Mosler until 1976, then until 1981 under his own direction and until 1993, when he retired, as a member of a college.

From 1973 to 1977 he chaired the German Society for International Law . During this time, two critical statements about the training of prospective lawyers in international law (1973 and 1975), a topic that Bernhardt had taken on, were made. A commission he chaired dealt with this problem and presented its results at a meeting in 1981. At a conference of the Association of German Constitutional Law Teachers in 1979 he gave the lecture “Germany after 30 years of the Basic Law ”. In addition, from 1984 to 1989 he was chairman of the Society for Comparative Law.

On January 27, 1981, he succeeded Mosler in the office of judge at the European Court of Human Rights. The closed shop case (Young, James and Webster v. UK ) was the first individual complaint on which it had to decide. Here he agreed to the majority vote. He was promoted to Vice-President in 1992 and, following the death of Rolv Ryssdal in 1998, he directed the ECHR as President for seven months until he resigned on October 31, 1998 due to the reorganization of the Court.

Honors

Works (selection)

  • The conclusion of international treaties in the federal state (1957, dissertation)
  • The interpretation of international treaties (1963, habilitation thesis)
  • Sources under international law (1961/1990)
  • Encyclopedia of Public International Law (1981ff, ed.)
  • Freedom of association of workers (1980, two volumes, edited together with Hermann Mosler)
  • International law in legal training (1981, ed.)

Web links

swell

  • Ulrich Beyerlin (ed.): Law between upheaval and probation. Festschrift for Rudolf Bernhardt . Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1995.
  • Erika Engel ( inter alia): European BASIC RIGHTS magazine . Born 1981, p. 382. NP Engel Verlag, Kehl am Rhein.
  • Gerhardt Köbler and Butz Peters: Who's who in German law . Publishing house CH Beck, Munich 2003.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Full text of the decision on the ECHR homepage ( memento of March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) German PDF, 91.2 kB
personal data
SURNAME Bernhardt, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German international lawyer, President of the European Court of Human Rights
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Kassel , Hessen, Germany