[2] Böckenförde received a PhD in law in Münster in 1956,[3] for a dissertation he wrote under the supervision of Hans Julius Wolff.

He also received a PhD in history in 1960 from the University of Munich[3] for a thesis supervised by Franz Schnabel.

In 1964 he completed his postdoctoral habilitation with a thesis titled The power of organisation in the purview of the government.

[3] He also received the Reuchlin Award of the City of Pforzheim for outstanding work in the humanities (1978),[9] the order of merit of the state of Baden-Württemberg (2003),[3] the Romano Guardini Award [de] of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria for work in the field of the philosophy of religion (2004),[10] the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought (2004),[11] the Sigmund Freud Prize for scholarly prose (2012),[12] and the Grand Cross of Merit (2016), the highest tribute the Federal Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for services to the nation.

[3] A sentence from a 1964 article of his caused decades of discussion in German and European political thought.