Elections, Law, and Politics

On October 29, the ACG and 1014 will host a discussion as part of our Superwahljahr series with Prof. Franz Mayer, Chair in Public Law, European Law, Comparative Law, and Law and Politics at the University of Bielefeld and Scholar in Residence at Columbia University

Prof. Franz Mayer holds the Chair in Public Law, European Law, Public International Law, Comparative Law and Law and Politics at the University of Bielefeld (Law Faculty). He studied Law, Political Science and History at the Universities of Bonn and Munich, at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po) and at Yale Law School. Visiting researcher Harvard Law School 2000; annual Visiting lecturer University of Warsaw since 2000; Visiting professor at Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne) 2007 and at Paris 2 (Panthéon-Assas) 2010; General Course Academy of European Law, European University Institute, Florence, 2011; Senior Emile Noël Fellow, NYU School of Law 2011; Visiting professor of Law at Columbia Law School Winter term 2012/2013; Short Term International Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School Fall term 2024 (non-resident).

Professor Mayer was Counsel in proceedings at the German Constitutional Court to the German Parliament in the Treaty of Lisbon-trial in 2008-2009 and in the first case related to the Euro-crisis, the case on the Euro stabilization mechanism 2010-2012, his most recent case for the German Parliament was the Next Generation EU-case on the €800 billion temporary recovery instrument (2021-2022). He was Counsel at the German Constitutional Court to the German government in the CETA case (2016-2022) and in the case on the Unified European Patent Court (2017-2020). His most recent case for the German government concerns the constitutionality of the new EP election law (2023-2024). In 2023, he was part of a Franco-German Group of 12 experts invited by the German and the French minister for Europe to write a report on institutional reform of the EU.

His teaching and research interests focus on European constitutional and administrative law, on comparative law, on the relationship between European law and politics, on parliaments in times of globalization, on internet law, sports law (European soccer law) and more generally on international law and public law. Since 2016, he has been a member of the German Football Association’s Federal Court (DFB Bundesgericht), ethics chamber. He has dual French and German citizenship and lives in Berlin with his family.