Chairholder

Carsten Bäcker was born in Kiel in 1979. After graduating from high school in Preetz (Holstein) in 1998, he commenced his law studies at the University of Kiel, where he also worked, beginning in 2000, as a junior research assistant. After passing the First State Law Examination in January 2003, he remained at the University of Kiel as Professor Robert Alexy’s senior research assistant while working towards the doctorate. In the same year, he joined the Young Forum for Legal Philosophy and was elected as its spokesperson, remaining in this capacity until 2014. In 2006, he completed a dissertation on the discourse theory of law and began his legal clerkship at Schleswig’s Higher Regional Court. After a period of residence at the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe (in the offices of Constitutional Court Judge Brun-Otto Bryde), he completed his legal clerkship, in September 2008, with the Second State Law Examination in Hamburg. Thereafter he returned to the University of Kiel for the Habilitation (the procedure, including a second dissertation, that is required to become certified as a university lecturer in Germany). Once again, he worked as Professor Alexy’s senior research assistant. Since 2010, Carsten Bäcker, initially as a representative of the Young Forum for Legal Philosophy, has been a member of the board of the German section of the International Association for Legal and Social Philosophy (IVR), and since 2011 he has served as the co-leader of a project for the psychological study of legal rationality. In the spring of 2015, he completed the requirements for the Habilitation from the University of Kiel on the basis of a dissertation on the principle of the rule of law.  He was subsequently certified as a university lecturer in the fields of public law and legal philosophy. This development was then followed by visiting professorships at the universities of Mainz, Heidelberg, Bielefeld, and Konstanz. Thereafter, in the summer of 2018, he was appointed to the Chair for Public Law IV at the University of Bayreuth.

Carsten Bäcker is married and the father of two children. His research foci are public law, philosophy of law, and constitutional theory. Publications by Carsten Bäcker have appeared in German and in English, and translations of his work have appeared in three foreign languages.