Chair of Public Law and Foundations of Law

Daniel Wolff holds the Chair of Public Law and Foundations of Law at the University of Greifswald. His work combines constitutional and administrative law with legal theory, legal history and comparative law (“foundations of law”). It is guided by the question of how the law of a constitutional democracy comes to terms with the past, keeps the future open for democratic choice, and responds when the constitutional order comes under pressure.

• Foundations of law: contemporary and comparative legal history; legal theory; comparative public law, with a particular focus on Israel, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom

• Constitutional law: fundamental rights; democracy, constitutional courts and judicial review; constitutional theory, amendment and design

• Administrative law: the administrative state; climate law and public health law

His recent work addresses the use of history in constitutional adjudication, the reform of constitutional amendment rules, and the resilience of courts and public administration in the face of authoritarian populism.

Daniel Wolff teaches constitutional and administrative law as well as seminars in legal theory and legal history. Together with colleagues, he has developed several new formats for teaching and academic exchange. In the Legal Masterclass, a small group of doctoral researchers and students spends three days discussing the work of a leading legal scholar. GryphonMoot is an in-house moot court. The Greifswald Law Lectures (Greifswalder Rechtsvorträge) are a public lecture series.

Before joining the University of Greifswald in April 2025, Daniel Wolff was Assistant Professor of Public Law (Juniorprofessor) at the University of Augsburg. He studied law at the University of Heidelberg, King’s College London and LMU Munich, and philosophy at the Munich School of Philosophy. He earned his doctorate at LMU Munich (2019) and an LL.M. at Yale Law School (2020). In 2024 he completed his Habilitation at LMU Munich, the postdoctoral qualification traditionally required for appointment to a full professorship in Germany. His Habilitation thesis, Zeit und Verfassung (“Time and the Constitution”, 2025), examines how constitutions learn from history and how they protect the ability of future majorities to govern themselves. He is qualified to teach public law, European law, legal theory, comparative law and contemporary legal history. He is a member of the German Society of Public Law (Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer).