Research
The faculty focuses its research activities predominantly on the University’s emerging field Law in Global Contexts. Its work on law in the digital transformation contributes to the university-wide interdisciplinary topic of digitalization and participates in a range of profile initiatives, such as Violence and Security as well as Literacy in Diversity Settings / Linguistic Diversity.
The research area Law in Global Contexts, which has characterized the faculty’s profile since its foundation in 1919, deals with law in its international dimensions and transnational aspects. It includes research activities in the following individual areas: international law, European law, comparative law and international private law, international criminal law, European insolvency law, international employment law, international tax law, law of the sea (international law of the sea and maritime commercial law), international environmental law, and migration and refugee law. The faculty’s extensive network of research institutions in Germany and abroad attests to its success in this area of concentration. For example, its strategic partners (University of Kyoto; Macquarie University, Sydney; National Taiwan University, Taipei), the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, the the Europa-Kolleg Hamburg, and the Universität Hamburg International Taxation Institute.
The global dimensions include all research activities that involve the principles and interdisciplinary aspects of law. This includes legal history, philosophy of law, legal theory, legal sociology, economic analysis of law, and criminology. Sustainability and law and media and law are further treated as distinct interdisciplinary topics. The Institute for Law and Economics, which is located in the faculty, has a strong research focus and is unparalleled in Germany. Diverse networks focusing on basic research with institutions abroad shape the faculty’s international profile (e.g., the Minerva Center for the Study of the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions at the University of Haifa, Israel). The structured doctoral training offered by the faculty under the umbrella of the Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy Graduate School of Law also aims to research the principles and interdisciplinary aspects of law.
The Centre for Law in the Digital Transformation combines the faculty’s research activities with fundamental issues, such as how legal method and regulatory approaches are subject to digital transformation. This deals with both digitalization in law and the digitalization of law. The research training group The Law in Digital Transformation is currently pursing these questions.