Jürgen Bröhmer

Biography

I was born and grew up in the beautiful village of Brücken, Germany, which is situated in the Bundesland (state) of Rhineland-Palatinate and there in the western Palatinate region close to the border of another German Land (state), the Saarland, and not very far – even by European standards – from the French border. The next bigger city and indeed one known to football fans around the world is Kaiserslautern, home of the 1. FC Kaiserslautern and venue of two games of the Socceroos during the 2006 world cup (against Japan and Italy). Our second “home base” is in Socorro, New Mexico, USA, where my wife Yvette is from and where a large part of our family lives. Socorro is a small town (approx. 9000 inhabitants) with a dominating University, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.Before we moved to Australia, my family and I lived in Saarbrücken, Germany. Saarbrücken is the the state capital of the Saarland, the smallest non-city state of Germany and arguably the state in Germany that enjoys the best quality of living, second perhaps only to that of the Palatinate region. Albeit being an old industrial state (coal and steel industry) the economic base of the state has shifted largely to the automotive industry (the Ford Motor Company operates a big plant in the state), information technology and services. Much is directly or indirectly fueled by Saarland University with its main campus in Saarbrücken and its impressive Medical School and University Hospital campus about 30 km outside of Saarbrücken in the city of Homburg/Saar. I worked at the Europa-Institute of Saarland University, a branch of the Faculty of Law. I came to Saarbrücken in 1989 to do the practical part of my legal training after having graduated from the University of Mannheim’s School of Law. I also enrolled in the Europa-Institute’s postgraduate European Studies course and started to work as a research assistant to the then Director of the Institute, Professor Georg Ress. What started with a 10-hour/week research contract developed into an intensive working relationship that lasted through the years to this day. In 1992 I took up a full-time assistantship with Professor Ress. I earned a doctorate (Dr. jur.) with a dissertation on “State Immunity and the Violation of Human Rights” in 1995, which was then published by Kluwer Law International in 1997 and is held by many law libraries around the world, including Murdoch University’s law library. After the doctorate I was offered to stay on and pursue a habilitation, a procedure required for and leading to recognition as a full professor in Germany. The result of this was a monograph in German with the – translated – title “Transparency as a Constitutional Principle – Basic Law and European Union”. It was published by the Mohr-Siebeck publishing house in Germany in 2004. Formally this lead to my recognition as a professor of law by the faculty of the Saarland University School of Law (Privatdozent) in 2002. In Saarbrücken I mainly taught European Union law, public international, international institutions’ and constitutional law. I remain affiliated to the Europa-Institute of Saarland University as a visiting professor.

Research Interest

Comparative constitutional law European Union law Public international law International human rights law