The Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany (MPIL)

The Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law was founded in Berlin in 1924 as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law). It was re-established in Heidelberg in 1949 within the framework of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. (Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Sciences) and currently employs 107 persons, 55 of whom are jurists.

From the very beginning, the Institute has fostered the transfer of knowledge between different legal disciplines by combining studies in public international law with comparative work on constitutional and administrative law. It has always been actively networking with actors in the international policy field. In addition, the Institute has considerably strengthened its cooperation with foreign universities and research institutes over the last years. This cooperation usually includes lectures and courses given by members of the Institute at the foreign research institutions as well as visits by their professors and students to Heidelberg.

For their research work, the members of the Institute can rely upon the service of the library, which is one of the most important in the world in the fields of public international law and foreign constitutional and administrative law. With its egregious research facilities, the Institute is permanently attracting a high number of researchers and scholars from around the world giving both the guests and the Institute’s staff the opportunity of sharing scientific findings and discussing legal views.

Under the aegis of the Institute’s director Professor Wolfrum, major constitutional and administrative law projects have been launched in recent years and are successfully pursued:

In Afghanistan, the Institute provides support in implementing the rule of law and building up the administration of justice. In this context the Institute is conducting Fair Trial workshops in Kabul for judges and public prosecutors.

In Sudan, the Institute, is accompanying the peace and constitutional process since 2002. The idea of the project is to furnish neutral legal expertise in the context of the establishment of a new Sudanese constitution. In this sense the immense professional reputation of the Institute and workshops conducted at its seat, Heidelberg, as a neutral place helped to restore mutual trust between the two parties. A Draft Legal and Constitutional Framework elaborated by the Institute received widespread distribution and broad appreciation. A series of workshops have already taken place in Khartoum and Rumbek dealing with constitutional problems like decentralisation, independence of the judiciary and the presettings of the Interim National Constitution for the constitutions of the sub-units.

The Institute is also the implementing partner to the Middle East Institute of International Law, which was established in Amman, Jordan, in 2005. It is the only academic institute of its kind in the region and aims to teach international law at the graduate level in English to students from the greater Middle East and beyond.

For further information: www.mpil.de