The Chair of Procedural and Civil Law (held by Professor Dr. Peter A. Windel since January 26, 1999) focuses on the central fields of procedural and private law, both in research and teaching.
The Chair covers the entirety of the law of civil procedure. Accordingly, research is not limited to the law of discovery and enforcement in contentious civil proceedings, but extends to the areas of voluntary jurisdiction and bankruptcy law. Further attention is directed towards the court system, as it lays the foundation for any litigation. From here, research activity stretches out to all other branches of procedural recourse.
“Civil Law” is “General Private Law” at its heart. Therefore, the Chair not only focuses on classic civil doctrine, as embodied in the German Civil Code and its supplementary statutes. Rather, it examines the fundamental questions of the private law system, irrespective of where they are regulated. Exemplary areas include the law of persons and family law, contract law including consumer law, and torts.
Another point is worth emphasizing: Legal dogmatics in the past century and a half have often been characterized by a strict separation between the substantive and the procedural law. This development has given rise to concerns. Neither can the rules governing the order of life be understood without considering the possibilities of enforcement in case of a dispute. Nor is it possible to establish a reasonable system of courts by ignoring the merits of a dispute. For that reason, the Chair aims to take sufficient account of this interdependence in research and teaching.
Last but not least, globalization demands from lawyers, jurists and legal scholars to broaden their legal and cultural horizon. Therefore, the Chair gets involved in the international legal dialogue both by scholarly and academic exchange and collaboration, as well as by supervising foreign students of law.
