Academia, Politics, and the Constitutional Court

The constitutional law expert and former constitutional judge Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde has become one of the most influential jurists in the Federal Republic of Germany, not least due to what has come to be known as the »Böckenförde Dilemma«, which maintains that the liberal, secular state lives from preconditions that it cannot guarantee itself.

This volume combines Böckenförde’s essays on the constitutional situation, constitutional law, and the order of Europe with a major biographical interview in which he talks about his career, his intellectual influences and his academic research, his Catholicism, his membership of the German Social Democratic Party, and his experiences as a constitutional judge. A substantial contribution to the history of ideas and contemporary history of the Federal Republic of Germany.