Donald P. Kommers

Rank

Emeritus Faculty

Title

Emeritus Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of Political Science and Professor of Law

Field(s)

Constitutional Law and Politics

Education

A.B., Catholic University
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1962

Research and Teaching Interests

German politics and society; constitutional law; church-state relations; international human rights law; Croatia

Biography

Professor Kommers has published scores of major articles, including 10 books, mainly in the areas of constitutional law and politics. Much of his work focuses on the constitutional courts of several advanced democracies. He is the author of the widely acclaimed book, The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany, the 3rd edition of which is soon to be published by the Duke University Press, and the coauthor of a major course book in American constitutional law, also in its 3rd edition. His next book, Germany’s Constitutional Odyssey will be published in 2011. As Professor Emeritus he continues to teach advanced courses in American and comparative constitutional law as well as an undergraduate seminar on religion and politics.

In 1998, he received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Germany’s Heidelberg University. He was the fourth American to be so honored by Heidelberg’s law faculty since the end of the Second World War. He also received an honorary doctor of laws degree from St. Norbert College in DePere, Wisconsin where he delivered the commencement address to the class of 2007.

In addition to lecturing widely in the United States and abroad, Professor Kommers has held many prestigious positions and fellowships. He has been a frequent recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a resident scholar in Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow on the law faculty of Cologne University (Germany), a Max Planck Society Fellow in the Max Planck Institute of International and Comparative Public Law in Heidelberg, a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Tokyo, and the winner of the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for senior U.S. scholars, an award that allowed him to spend yet another year in Germany working on projects of his own choosing. His other honors include major grants and senior fellowships from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, American Philosophical Society, and German Marshall Fund of the United States. In 1991, he was co-winner of the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for an article on privacy published in The World and I (September 1990). In 2008, he won the Berlin Prize, a coveted award that permitted him to spend a residential fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin (Germany) where he continued his work on Germany’s constitutional experience since 1945. On November 8, 2010, in a ceremony at the German Consulate in Chicago, Professor Kommers received, in the name of Germany’s Federal President, the Distinguished Service Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his three decades of scholarship on German life, law, and politics and for having “remarkably enriched both the American and German legal systems and building a bridge between our countries as few others have."

Professor Kommers remains active in a number of professional organizations, including the American Political Science Association and the American Bar Association. In addition, he has served as President of the National Conference Group on German Politics, as an advisor to President Carter’s Commission on the Holocaust, as editor of The Review of Politics (for 11 years), and as an editorial advisory board member of several professional journals, including the American Journal of Jurisprudence, American Journal of Comparative Law, and the International Journal of Comparative Constitutional Law.

Contact Information

Office: 1139 Flanner Hall
Phone: 574-631-6304
Fax: 574-631-4197
Email: Donald.P.Kommers.1@nd.edu

Mailing Address

Department of Political Science
217 O'Shaughnessy Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556

Vita

kommers cv

Website(s)

http://law.nd.edu/people/faculty-and-administration/teaching-and-research-faculty/donald-p-kommers/