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Chair of Philosophy of |
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Lorenz Kähler
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For cv and
research projects please see below |
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Research Assistant Visiting adress: Tel: Fax: |
Curriculum Vitae
Lorenz Kähler
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Education and Qualifications |
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1973 |
born in Pößneck (Thuringia) |
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1992 |
leaving Certificate "Wilhelm Ostwald"
school in |
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1992 - 1994 |
national service
as a Action
Reconciliation Service for Peace
volunteer in the foundation "For the Children of Chernobyl", |
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1994 – 1996 |
law and philosophy at Rupprecht-Karls-Universität, Heidelberg |
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1995 – 1996 |
Erasmus student at King’s College London, "Diploma in Legal Studies" |
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1996 - 2000 |
law and philosophy at Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, first state exam |
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2003 2004 2007 since Dec. 2007 |
PhD-exam second state (bar) exam master in philosophy at Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen research assistant |
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Doctoral Project
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"Structure and Methods of Overruling Decisions" |
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A court changes the law if its
decision becomes an authority. It changes precedence if it overrules a
decision. Although both processes are frequently interrelated and legal
realism tells us there is no difference between them, the mechanisms of
overruling decisions are hardly considered in the discussion of judge-made
law in Germany. This is astonishing as the treatment of precedents and their
overruling is a central feature of every legal system.If,
for instance, special justification is required to justify an overruling, as
the German Supreme Court has stated in BGHZ 85, 64, 66 and as other High
Courts in different countries have also ruled, the question of what the law
is cannot be answered without reference to precedent. The German legal
system, however, usually regards precedents as having no legal authority for
future cases. |
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To clarify this question, my research project tries
to
A change of precedent can occur in many different ways: in juristic
style, in terms of the concepts used, in the application or interpretation of
rules, and in results and their justifications. Thus, the first part of the
thesis discusses the concept of "overruling" and creates a typology
of overruling decisions. One of its central questions is when exactly one
deals with an overruling which is far from obvious because courts do not
always lay down the complete reasoning. I develop the distinction between
rule-relevance and result-relevance of jurisdictional change in this part.
This distinction helps to explain how one can change the law without
destroying citizen confidence in the continuity of court decisions. The focus of the second chapter is a quantitative and qualitative
analysis of legal decisions. Among the questions to be examined in this part
are the following:
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My empirical basis for this section consists of decisions by the
German Supreme Court and the This part discusses the legal and ethical requirements for overrulings. These requirements range from duties arising
from process law (such as the referral to the so-called "great
chambers" in the Supreme Court) to duties arising from material
constitutional law (such as the adoption of a general rule justifying the
decision). |
Current Research Project
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"The influence and variety of default rules" My main
current research project is an analysis of default rules or “ius dispositivum” as it
was traditionally called. It tries to understand what default rules are, how
they function and how they can be justified. In order to develop a concept of
default rules it is necessary to distinguish between the validity of rules
and their applicability. The main characteristics of default rules is that
their applicability can differ from their validity, i.e. that they are cases
in which a rule is valid but not applicable. The models
developed so far can not grasp the character of these rules completely.
Default rules have considerable influences on contracts and behaviour as a
variety of studies shows. If one takes the autonomy and freedom of the
contracting parties seriously a justification of default rules becomes thus
necessary. It is provided by a model that integrates a plurality of factors
like utility, autonomy, and coherence. These factors can not be totally
reduced to each other. The model has implications for the decision which
rules of the current law are to be considered as default rules in case the
legislator has left this question open. The presumption in favour of default
rules can only be overcome if there are no formal or substantial mechanisms
due to which the mandatory character of a rule can be avoided. |
English Publications
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1.
The
Indeterminacy of Legal Indeterminacy, in: Zenon Bankowski (ed.), Epistemology and Ontology, Stuttgart
2005, pp. 77 2.
Decisionmaking about Suretyships under Empirical Uncertainty – How
Consequences of Decisions about Suretyships Might
Influence the Law, in: European Review of Private Law, vol. 13, pp. 333
(2005) 3.
Conflict and
Compromise in the Harmonization of European Law, in: Thomas Wilhelmsson, Elina Paunio, Annika Pohjolainen (eds.), Private Law and the Many Cultures of
Europe, Alphen aan den Rijn 2007, pp. 125 4.
The influence
of normative reasons on the formation of legal concepts, in Jaap Hage / Dietmar
von der Pfordten (eds.),
Legal Concepts, Springer: |
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