Research

Research in international and foreign law as well as comparative law plays a central role at the Cologne faculty. This international orientation is a specific feature of the Faculty's research profile.

The issues of cross-border application and development of law and comparative law are researched in particular in the Institutes for Foreign and International Criminal Law, for International and Foreign Private Law, for Procedural Law and Insolvency Law, for International and European Insolvency Law, for Public International Law and Foreign Public Law and in numerous chairs.

A further focus is international law and European Union law. Several relevant institutes and chairs are dedicated to both areas of law in all their breadth and depth. Special features include the Academy for European Human Rights Protection, the Institute for Air Law, Space Law and Cyber Law, the Institute for International Peace and Security Law and the International Investment Law Centre Cologne (IILCC), the Documentation Center for European Lawyer and Notary Law and the Institute for German and European Science Law. The Center for Transnational Law (CENTRAL) is dedicated to research into transnational commercial and arbitration law.

The individual academic institutions span a worldwide network of academic cooperation in their fields with a large number of foreign research institutes and bodies. For more than six decades, the faculty as a whole has maintained a close academic relationship with the University of California Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall), which also includes an exchange of lecturers and doctoral students. The cooperation was founded by Professors William Prosser (Berkeley) and Gerhard Kegel (Cologne), and intensified in particular by Richard M. Buxbaum (Berkeley). Close institutional academic relationships have also existed for almost three decades with the École de Droit de la Sorbonne, Université Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), initiated by Ulrich Hübner (Cologne), as well as with the Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche dell'Università degli Studi di Firenze and the China University of Political Science and Law.
Funding is also provided for double doctorates in the co-tutelle procedure with Italian and French faculties under the supervision of a Cologne faculty member and a member of the respective other faculty.

With Professor Dr. iur. Dr. h.c. Thomas von Danwitz, Vice President of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, Professor Dr. iur. Dr. h.c. Dr. h.c. Angelika Nußberger, former Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights, and Professor Dr. iur. Dr. h.c. Dr. h.c. Claus Kreß, LL.M. (Cambridge), ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice in the case "The Gambia v. Myanmar", are members of the faculty of judges at high international courts.