Florian Sander studied law and philosophy at Universität Hamburg. Following the First State Examination in Law, he worked as a research assistant at the University’s Institute for Philosophy of Law. In 2004, he received his doctorate for a thesis on representation and the allocation of powers in the European multi-level system. His Referendariat with the Hamburg included stages in Berlin (German Federal Department of Justice) and Brussels (European Parliament).
Supported by scholarships from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and the ERP programme, he subsequently completed an LL.M. at Harvard Law School, where he also worked as a Research Assistant in Constitutional Law with Prof. Daniel Meltzer. He passed the New York Bar Examination in 2005 and was admitted as an Attorney-at-Law in New York in 2006.
He has taught continuously at the Faculty of Law of Universität Hamburg since 2015. In 2026, he completed his Habilitation with the monograph Der überforderte Staat. Die wohlfahrtsstaatliche Krise der Spätmoderne als Verfassungsproblem [The Overburdened State: The Crisis of the Late-Modern Welfare State as a Constitutional Problem] and was awarded the venia legendi in Public Law, European Law and Philosophy of Law.
Alongside his academic work, Florian Sander has held executive positions in legal practice and business, including roles at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, BNP Paribas Real Estate Investment Management and as Chief Operating Officer of an SDAX-listed investment company.
