Robert Alexy | |
---|---|
Born |
Oldenburg, Germany |
9 September 1945
Nationality | Germany |
Fields | Law |
Institutions | University of Kiel |
Alma mater | University of Göttingen |
Doctoral advisor | Ralf Dreier |
Doctoral students | Martin Borowski, Mattias Kumm, Jochen Bittner |
Notable awards | Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2010) |
Robert Alexy (born September 9, 1945 in Oldenburg, Germany) is a jurist and a legal philosopher.
Alexy studied law and philosophy at the University of Göttingen. He received his PhD in 1976 with the dissertation A Theory of Legal Argumentation, and he achieved his Habilitation in 1984 with a Theory of Constitutional Rights.
He is a professor at the University of Kiel and in 2002 he was appointed to the Academy of Sciences and Humanities at the University of Göttingen. In 2010 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Alexy's definition of law looks like a mix of Kelsen's normativism (which was an influential version of legal positivism) and Radbruch's legal naturalism (Alexy, 2002), but Alexy's theory of argumentation (Alexy, 1983) puts him very close to legal interpretivism.
Since 2008 the Universities of Alicante, Buenos Aires, Tucamán, Antwerp, National University of San Marcos in Lima, Prague, Coimbra, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Chapecó, Rio de Janeiro and Bogotá awarded him the honorary doctorate degree.