Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory

Since its foundation in 1964, the institute with its three departments, the specialist library with more than 470,000 printed media units as well as numerous international visitors, has become a worldwide hub for those working on past and present national and transnational legal orders.

Currently, Marietta Auer, Thomas Duve, Dieter Simon and Stefan Vogenauer are Scientific Members of the institute.

With the appointment of the new director Marietta Auer, the institute has dedicated a third department to legal theory and thus expanded its field of research.

A particular challenge embraced by the institute is to create historical and empirical bases for a critical study of the system of law in a globalized world.

[2] Since 2002 the institute's journal Rechtsgeschichte appears annually in print at Klostermann Verlag[3] and is simultaneously available through open access since 2012.

Friends and supporters of the institute founded an association in 2003, which is called "Freunde des Frankfurter Max-Planck-Instituts für europäische Rechtsgeschichte e.V.".