The Environmental State (1988 - 1993)
Chair: Professor Michael Kloepfer, Humboldt University of Berlin, Walter Hallstein Institute for European Constitutional Law
Topic of the Collegium
The objective of the collegium is the analysis and the treatment of the questions concerning a community committed to the intactness of its environment. This environmental integrity is both the goal of the community and the measure of its success in future decisions. It is important for this research to integrate the communal as well as governmental viewpoints. The state increasingly identifies with the objectives of environmental protection and the resulting political, economical and legal consequences: This will be a central point in the present research project. This topic was discussed by an interdisciplinary team of participants of the collegium.
Nearly half of the permanent members of the collegium were legal experts. The other half consisted of social scientists and a philosopher. The participants formed six different teams consisting of at least one legal expert and a scientist of a different academic discipline.
The results of the collegium were published in a series of 22 publications called "Studies of the Environmental State". Members of the collegium participated in the "Group of Professors" on the development of the "Environmental Protection Act", the objective of which was to combine the German environmental protection laws in a standardized text of law equal to the German "Code of Social Law" or the BGB.
Research Groups and Projects
Research Group 1.1
The State and Environmental Responsibility
Governmental Objectives and the Protection of the Environment
Dietrich Murswiek, Christoph Enders, Susanne Meyer and Albrecht Philipp
Prevention and Protection: Of Governmental Obligations and Legal Regulations
Rainer Wahl, Georg Hermes and Karsten Sach
Research Group 1.2
Legitimization and the Possibilities of Environmental Protection by the Society
Liability Law and the Prevention of Environmental Damage: Basic Economical Considerations
Alfred Endres and Reimund Schwarze
Insurance and Fonds as Solutions to the Prevention of Environmental Damage: A Legal Perspective
Eckard Rehbinder and Marc Zimmerling
Research Group 1.3
Societal Laws and Environmental Protection
Environmental Norms as a Problem of Allocation in Society
Alfred Endres, Karin Holm-Müller and Reimund Schwarze
Environmental Norms and Society
Peter Marburger and Thomas Gebhard
Research Group 2
Environmental Protection and the European Community
Basic Problems of the Environmental Protection Policy of the EU: Perspectives from Social Science and Social Economics
Lothar F. Neumann, Andreas Pastowki and Hans-Joachim von der Ruhr
European Environmental Protection Law
Hans D. Jarass and Frank Schreiber
Research Group 4
Constitutionalism and the Obligations of the State in an Environmental State / Actions and Risk in an Environmental State
Carl Friedrich Gethmann, Michael Kloepfer, Anette Klapperich, Tobias Masing, Sigrid Reinert and Martin Schulte
Research Group 5
Environmental Law and its Historical Basis
Hans-Peter Benöhr and Cornelia Schuck
Research Group 6
Selected Questions Concerning Environmental Taxes
Horst Zimmermann, Bernd Hansjürgens, Wiebke Lass and Nicola Schuldt