Dieter Grimm

Dieter Grimm was born in Kassel in 1937. He studied Jurisprudence and Political Science in Frankfurt, Freiburg, Berlin, Paris, and Harvard, completed both juridical state examinations, holds a Master of Laws from Harvard University, and earned his Dr. jur at Frankfurt University with a thesis on "Solidarity as a Legal Principle". He earned his habilitation in Frankfurt in 1979 in German and Foreign Public Law, Modern Legal and Constitutional History, Legal Theory, and Political Science.

From 1967 to 1979, he was a Research Lecturer at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt and, from 1979 on, Professor for Public Law at Bielefeld University, where he was also Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research for a time.

From 1987 to 1999, Dieter Grimm was a Justice on the Federal Constitutional Court and there, in the First Senate, was responsible for the fields of freedom of opinion, the press, and broadcasting; freedom of assembly; and freedom of association, personal rights, data protection, and commercial law. In 1996, he was appointed Distinguished Member of the Global Law Faculty at New York University Law School and, in 1999, was awarded the Major Federal Service Cross with Sash and Star.

In January 2000 he was appointed Professor of Public Law at the Humboldt University of Berlin and a Permanent Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. From October 2001 until March 2007 he was alos the Rector of the Wissenschaftskolleg.