Updates

Back to News

Former Bucerius Law School President Joins Federal Constitutional Court of Germany

Dr. Doris Koenig, Claussen Simon Chair for International Law and now former Bucerius Law School President, has joined the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany as a judge, replacing Dr. Gertrude Luebbe-Wolff on the second senate of the court. Judges for the Federal Constitutional Court are nominated and elected to the position and serve for a single term of twelve years.

“The ZEIT-Foundation sends its best wishes to Prof. Koenig on her journey to Karlsruhe [where the court is based]. Dr. Koenig has been a member of Bucerius Law School since the beginning…it is bittersweet to see her leave, because we are losing a a true role model for academic teaching and leadership,” said Dr. Michael Goering, head of the ZEIT-Foundation Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius.

Doris König, born 1957 in Kiel, has been president of Bucerius Law School since October 1, 2012. She holds the “Claussen-Simon-Stiftungslehrstuhl für Internationales Recht” (Claussen Simon Foundation Chair for International Law). From 2000 to 2012 she held the Chair of Public Law, General Administrative Law, International and European Law at Bucerius Law School. Doris König studied law at the Christian Albrecht University in Kiel. Following the First Legal State Examination, she received a Master of Comparative Law (M.C.L.) from the University of Miami School of Law in 1982. After the Second Legal State Examination, she was employed as a research assistant at Kiel University’s Institute for International Law.

After completing her doctoral thesis in the field of international maritime law, she served as a judge at the District Court of Hamburg (1989 – 1992). She then returned to Kiel University in the Walther-Schücking Institute for International Law as a research assistant.

In December 1998 Doris König finished her professorial thesis on the transfer of sovereign rights within the framework of the European integration process and received the postdoctoral qualification (venia legendi) to work as a professor in the field of “public law, including general administrative law, international and European law.” From 1999 to 2000, she served as an interim professor at various chairs in Saarbrücken, Halle (Saale) and Kiel.

Her main research interests are in the fields of European integration, international maritime and environmental law in relation to international business law, and the international law of human rights.

Since 2004, Doris König has been the chairperson of the Hamburg-based International Foundation for Law of the Sea, which holds an annual Summer Academy on the international law of the sea and merchant shipping law. In addition, she has been a member of the advisory board on public international law to the German Department of State since 2004 and a chairperson of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) since 2007.