The Institutes within the Max Planck Law network are major contributors to the world of legal scholarship, publishing a wealth of research in various formats, from book series, working papers, research paper series, to academic journals.
Many of the Institutes are associated with notable journals, either through direct publication or through researchers holding managing/senior editorial positions. In an ongoing commitment to the global dissemination of knowledge, many of these journals are either fully or partially open access, with English often prominent as a vehicular language. Below are a number of such journals, in no particular order.
Hosted directly on its own website, ‘Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History‘ is the Journal of the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory . The Directors Marietta Auer, Thomas Duve, and Stefan Vogenauer head the editorial team.
‘Administory – Journal for the History of Public Administration / Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsgeschichte‘ is published jointly by the Institute of Austrian Historical Research (IÖG) and the Swiss Federal Archives (SFA), in cooperation with MPI-Frankfurt and the Munich Centre for Global History, LMU Munich. Peter Collin, Research Field Coordinator at MPI-Frankfurt, serves as one of the managing editors.
‘eucrim‘, a quarterly journal associated with the online platform of the same name that serves as a Europe-wide forum for European criminal and ‘criministrative’ law, is edited by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law . It is co-financed by the European Commission, European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF). Professor Dr Ralf Poscher, a Director at MPI-Freiburg, sits on the editorial board.
The Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law jointly publishes the Journal of Japanese Law with the German-Japanese Association of Jurists (DJJV). Harold Baum—Affiliate, former Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Centre of Expertise on Japan (MPI-Hamburg)—founded the Journal of Japanese Law in 1996 and served as the managing editor until 2020, after which he has been a co-managing editor.
Long-standing since 1929, the ‘Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht / Heidelberg Journal of International Law‘ is published under the auspices of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law . The editors-in-chief are Armin von Bogdandy and Anne Peters, both directors at MPI-Heidelberg.
Anne Peters also serves as Editor-in-chief for the ‘Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d’historie du droit international‘, with Rafael Schäfer, Senior Reserach Fellow (MPI-Heidelberg), as Managing editor.
The ‘International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (IIC)‘, one of the most respected journals in the fields of intellectual property and competition law, has been published for over fifty years by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition , with the Institute’s Directors, Reto M. Hilty and Josef Drexl, currently serving as editors.
Finally, ‘Zeitschrift für ausländisches und internationales Arbeits- und Sozialrecht (ZIAS)‘ is under the editorial leadership of Ulrich Becker, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy .
This report highlights the Max Planck Law Institutes’ ongoing commitment to making top-tier research as accessible as possible. For those keen on exploring further, many research contributions can also be found on the Max Planck Law SSRN page, which features a multitude of collated research papers, working papers, and other academic outputs from the diverse Institutes within the Max Planck Law network. Moreover, from this page you can easily navigate to an individual Institute’s SSRN page.
Addenda
Following publication of this article, it has been agreed that the following journals should also be included in the original list:
The Rabel Journal of Comparative and International Private Law, in association with Jürgen Basedow †, Bernhard Großfeld, Klaus J. Hopt, Hein Kötz, Ernst-Joachim Mestmäcker, Wernhard Möschel, and Reinhard Zimmermann, is edited by Holger Fleischer and Ralf Michaels, Directors at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law . The journal was founded in 1927 by Ernst Rabel. It is planned for this major journal to become fully open access in 2024.
MPI-Hamburg also publishes the German Journal of Chinese Law with the German-Chinese Jurists’ Association and the Sino-German Institute for Legal Studies of the Universities of Göttingen and Nanjing. Knut Benjamin Pißler (Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Centre of Expertise on China and Korea at MPI-Hamburg) is a member of its academic board. The journal’s archives are open access.
GRUR International – Journal of European and International IP Law is a monthly, peer-reviewed academic journal under the academic responsibility of . The journal transitioned from a German to English-language publication in 2020 and deals scientifically with the fields of IP and Competition Law as well as the areas related to them.