Brun-Otto Bryde, judge of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, will deliver the UW-Madison’s Mildred Fish-Harnack Human Rights and Democracy Lecture on Wednesday, October 19 at 3:45 p.m. in the Godfrey & Kahn Lecture Hall (Room 2260) of the Law School.  Justice Bryde will speak on “Fundamental Rights as Guidelines and Inspiration: German Constitutionalism in International Perspective.”

Host of the lecture is Law School Professor Heinz Klug, director of the Global Legal Studies Initiative.  Welcoming remarks will be presented by the Hon. Shirley Abrahamson, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

Justice Bryde, who was a visiting professor at the Law School in 1989 and 1994, has lectured and written extensively on international and comparative law.  He is a professor of public law and political science at Justus-Liebig-Universität-Giessen.  He has served on the Federal Constitutional Court, similar to the U.S. Supreme Court, since 2001.

The Mildred Fish-Harnack Lecture, sponsored by the UW-Madison International Institute in conjunction with the Global Legal Studies Initiative, is named after the UW-Madison alumna executed for her resistance work by the Nazis during World War II, the only American civilian to suffer that fate. The lecture is designed to promote greater understanding of human rights and democracy, and to enrich international studies on the UW-Madison campus. Each year, the Institute invites a distinguished individual who has contributed to the cause of human rights through scholarship and research.

Past speakers have included Yash Ghai, currently a visiting professor at the Law School, a leading international authority on constitutional law and human rights, and José Zalaquett, one of the leaders of Chile’s Committee for Peace during the Pinochet regime.

Background on the lecture topic:

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court was established in 1949 in the aftermath of World War II and was approved by the occupying powers, including the U.S. Provision for such a court was made in the “Basic (or fundamental) Law,” which was considered more of a provisional charter than a constitution, reflecting the fact that Germany, divided into East and West, was no longer a single nation-state. The document is now considered one of the most important constitutions in the world.

The high court is not an appeals court but rather a court of judicial review, able to rule on whether acts by Germany’s three branches of government –– legislative, executive and judicial –– are constitutional. The Court’s landmark Lueth decision of 1958 holds that fundamental rights are “guidelines and inspiration” for the legal system and that civil law may not contradict them. In July 2005, the Court refused to extradite a German citizen of Syrian origin wanted by Spanish authorities in connection with the Madrid train bombings. The Court ruled that new European procedures to simplify these kinds of extraditions violated the rights of Germans citizens.

Submitted by on October 6, 2005

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