Volkmar Gessner

Volkmar Gessner (born October 9, 1937 ; † November 8, 2014 in Hamburg ) was a German lawyer and university professor . From 1992 to 2003 he was Professor of Legal Sociology , Comparative Law and European Legal Policy at the University of Bremen .

Volkmar Gessner (Gorbea, 2006)

education

After studying sociology and law at the University of Munich , Gessner passed both state law exams, also in Munich. The doctorate to Dr. jur. took place in 1969 at the Law and Political Science Faculty of the University of Münster with the thesis The Judge in the State Conflict: An Investigation Using the Example of International Legal Relations of the American Republics (Reviewer: Hans Ulrich Scupin and Niklas Luhmann ). Gessner completed his habilitation in sociology, in particular legal sociology, in 1976 at the Sociological Faculty of Bielefeld University with the thesis Law and Conflict: A Sociological Study of Private Law Conflicts in Mexico (Reviewer: Niklas Luhmann, Karl F. Schumann ). This font was shaped by a research stay in Mexico .

Professional career

Gessner worked as a judge in a civil chamber at the Münster district court and as a single judge in criminal matters at the Recklinghausen district court . From 1970 to 1982 he was a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg , where he became head of the social science research group from 1975. He also worked as a lecturer in Regensburg, Bielefeld, Friborg (Switzerland) and Hamburg. In 1982 he and his research group were appointed director (until 1992) of the newly founded Center for European Legal Policy at the University of Bremen . This went hand in hand with the appointment as professor for legal sociology , comparative law and European legal policy at the Faculty of Law at the University of Bremen . From 1997 to 1999 he was also a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara . After his retirement in 2003, he took over the project management at the Collaborative Research Center “Statehood in Transition” at the University of Bremen until 2007 .

Legal sociology

Gessner played an important role nationally and internationally in the (re) establishment of legal sociology in Germany and elsewhere. He was one of the founders of the legal sociology section in the German Society for Sociology, as well as the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL). With Professor Francisco Javier Caballero Harriet, he founded the Laboratorio de Sociología jurídica in Donostía- San Sebastian . With Caballero Harriet, he was also instrumental in founding the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Oñati . From 2003 to 2005 he was director of this institute. For his life's work in this area, Gessner received the Adam Podgòrecki Prize of the RCSL in 2013.

Varia

Gessner was the son of the botanist Fritz Gessner .

He died in 2014 after a long and serious illness.

Publications (selection)

Monographs

• El otro derecho comparado. Ensayos sobre cultura y seguridad juridica en la era de la globalization. Translated and edited by Hector Fix-Fierro. Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico 2013 .
• with Armin Höland and Csaba Varga: European Legal Cultures. Dartmouth, Aldershot 1996.
• with Hanno von Freyhold, Enzo Vial and Helmut Wagner: Cost of Judicial Barriers for the Consumer in the Single Market. Office for Official Publications, Commission of the European Union, Luxembourg 1995.
• with Armin Höland and Jürgen Daviter: Self-administration economy - against economy and law? AJZ, Bielefeld 1987, ISBN 3-921680-66-2 .
• The conflictos sociales y la administration de justicia en México . Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico 1984.
• with K. Plett: The social plan in the bankrupt company. The practice of an autonomous regulatory model at the intersection of labor and bankruptcy law. Cologne 1982.
• Law and Conflict: A Sociological Study of Private Law Conflicts in Mexico . Mohr, Tübingen 1976, ISBN 3-16-638382-4 .
• Sociology of Litigation . Legal courses Alpmann u. Schmidt, Münster 1973.
• The judge in the conflict of states: An investigation using the example of the international law of the American republics . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1969.

Editorships

• Contractual Certainty in International Trade - Empirical Studies and Theoretical Debates on Institutional Support for Global Economic Exchanges. Hart, Oxford 2009.
• with David Nelken: European Ways of Law - Towards a European Sociology of Law. Hart, Oxford 2007. (Chinese translation 2009)
• with Christoph Antons: Globalization and Resistance - Law Reform in Asia since the Crisis. Hart, Oxford 2007.
• with Richard P. Appelbaum and William LF Felstiner: Rules and Networks - The Legal Culture of Global Business Transactions. Hart, Oxford September 2001.
• Emerging Legal Certainty: Empirical Studies on the Globalization of Law. (= Oñati International Series in Law and Society). Dartmouth, Aldershot 1998.
• Foreign Courts. Civil Litigation in Foreign Legal Cultures. (= Oñati International Series in Law and Society). Dartmouth, Aldershot 1996.
• with Monika Frommel: Erosion of standards. Nomos, Baden-Baden 1996.
• with A. Höland: Reception of Western Law or Autochthonous Legal Formation in the GDR and Eastern Europe? - A legal sociological conversation . Center for European Legal Policy, ZERP-DP 1, Bremen 1990.
• with John Thomas: Socio-Legal Research and Policy Studies . Law and Policy (Special Issue) 1988, Vol. 10, Nos. 2 & 3.
• with Armin Höland and Jürgen Daviter: Legal, tax, social and administrative obstacles to the development of local employment initiatives. 3 Vol. Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg 1986.
• with W. Hassemer: counterculture and law. Nomos, Baden-Baden 1985.
• with G. Winter: Legal forms of interweaving state and economy. (= Yearbook for Legal Sociology and Legal Theory. Volume 8). Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1982.
• with W. Harth, F. Hirtz, O. Kießler and K. Ziegert: Environmental protection and legal sociology. Gieseking, Bielefeld 1978.
• with T. Ansay: Guest workers in society and law. (= Beck's Black Series. Volume 108). Beck, Munich 1974.

Articles (newer)

• The Use of Social Science Information in Law - Comment on the British Inquiry Report. (2006) In: Sortuz. Oñati Journal of Emergent Socio-legal Studies. Volume 6, No. 1, 2014, pp. 29–45.
• State / society Synergies in Western and Japanese Economic Law and Judicial Reform. In: Dimitri Vanoverbeke, Jeroen Maesschalck, David Nelken, Stephan Parmentier (eds.): The Changing Role of Law in Japan: Empirical Studies in Culture, Society and Policy Making. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham 2014, pp. 35-49.
• Weberian versus Pluralistic Legal Forces in the Global Political Economy. paper presented at the workshop Law, Contestation, and Power in the Global Political Economy, coordinated by Edward S. Cohen (Westminster College) and A. Claire Cutler (University of Victoria), Oñati Socio-Legal Series, v. 3 n.4 (2013).
• Enabling Global Business Transactions: Relational and Legal Mechanisms. In: Glenn Morgan, Richard Whitley (Eds.): Capitalisms and Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 146-165.
• El uso de la información judicial. In: Oñati Socio-Legal Series. vol. 1, no. 2, 2011, pp. 1–26.
• Comparación jurídica y pluralismo jurídico global. In: José Antonio Caballero Juárez, Hugo A. Concha Cantú, Héctor Fix-Fierro, Francisco Ibarra Palafox (eds.): Sociología del derecho. Culturas y Sistemas Jurídicos Comparados. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2010, pp. 95-124.
• Theories of Change - the Governance of Business Transactions in Globalizing Economies. In: Volkmar Gessner (Ed.): Contractual Certainty in International Trade - Empirical Studies and Theoretical Debates on Institutional Support for Global Economic Exchanges. Hart, Oxford 2009, pp. 175-213.
• Towards a Theoretical Framework for Contractual Certainty in Global Trade. In: Volkmar Gessner (Ed.): Contractual Certainty in International Trade - Empirical Studies and Theoretical Debates on Institutional Support for Global Economic Exchanges. Hart, Oxford 2009, pp. 3-27.
• Towards a Socio-Legal Theory of Contractual Risk. In: Sociologia del Diritto. 36, 2009, pp. 83-92.
• Los Tribunales - Enfoques económicos y sociológicos. In: Rafael Sánchez Vázquez (ed.): Administración, Procuración e Impartición de Justicia, Memoria del Congreso Nacional e Internacional. Montiel & Soriano, Puebla / México 2008, pp. 21–31.
• Regulación y Soporte: El comercio internacional en una cultura juridica global. In: Alfonso de Julios-Campuzano (ed.): Ciudadanía y Derecho en la Era de la Globalización. Dykinson, Madrid 2007, pp. 179-192.
• with David Nelken: Introduction: Studying European Ways of Law. In: Volkmar Gessner (Ed.): European Ways of Law - Towards a European Sociology of Law. Hart, Oxford 2007, pp. 1-17.
• with Christoph Antons: Introduction. In: Christoph Antons, Volkmar Gessner (Ed.): Globalization and Resistance - Law Reform in Asia since the Crisis. Hart, Oxford 2007, pp. 1-24.
• Legalization and the Varieties of Capitalism. In: Christoph Antons, Volkmar Gessner (Ed.): Globalization and Resistance - Law Reform in Asia since the Crisis. Hart, Oxford 2007, pp. 27-51.
• Culture, globally legal. In: David Clark (Ed.): Encyclopedia for Law & Society. Sage, 2007, pp. 367-369.
• Teaching Legal Culture. In: Mathew John, Sitharamam Kakarala (Ed.): Enculturing Law: New Agendas for Legal Pedagogy. Tulika Books, New Delhi 2007, pp. 59-72.
• Regulation and Support - International Business in a Global Legal Culture. In: Péter Cserne et al. (Ed.): Theatrum legale Mundi - Symbola CS. Varga oblata. Societas Sancti Stephani, Budapest 2007, pp. 147–159.
• Preliminary considerations on the operationalization of legal cultural influences on global legal developments. In: Ludwig Krämer (Ed.): Law and Environment - Essays in Honor of Prof Dr Gerd Winter. Europa Law Publishing, Groningen 2003, pp. 21-32.
• Legal pluralism and global social movements. In: Journal of Legal Sociology. 23, 2002, pp. 277-305.
• with RP Appelbaum and WL Felstiner: The Legal Culture of Global Business Transactions. In: RP Appelbaum, WL Felstiner, V. Gessner: Rules and Networks - The Legal Culture of Global Business Transactions. Hart, Oxford 2001, pp. 1-36.
• Globalization and Legal Certainty. In: Volkmar Gessner, Ali Cem Budak (Ed.): Emerging Legal Certainty - Empirical Studies on the Globalization of Law. Ashgate, Aldershot 1998, pp. 427-540. (Reprinted in: David Held, Anthony McGrew (Eds.): The Global Transformations Reader - An Introduction to the Globalization Debate. Polity Press, Cambridge 2000, pp. 172–180)

Web links

• Volkmar Gessner's website at uni-bremen.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} memorial page on the website of the University of Bremen (last accessed on March 10, 2020).
2. ↑ Announcement on the webpage of the RCSL