Volkmar Gessner
Volkmar Gessner (9 October 1937 – 8 November 2014) was a German university professor and a socio-legal scholar. Career. Gessner studied sociology and law at the University of Munich. He received a doctorate in law from the University of Münster (1969) and the habilitation from the faculty of sociology of the University of Bielefeld. After serving as a civil judge in Münster and Recklinghausen, he worked at the Max Planck Institut für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht in Hamburg, where he headed a social science working group after 1975. In 1980, Gessner was appointed professor of Sociology of Law , Comparative Law and European Legal Policy at the University of Bremen. From 1980 to 1990, he also served as one of the directors of the newly founded Zentrum für Europäische Rechtspolitik in Bremen (Center for European Legal Policy). From 1997 to 1999, he was a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. After his retirement from the University of Bremen in 2003, he served until 2005 as Scientific Director of the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Oñati, Spain. Achievements. Both in his publications and organizational work, Gessner made major contributions to the development of contemporary  sociology of law. In 1988 as the then secretary of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law, he was instrumental in setting up the International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL). and was specifically involved in creating its International Master's Programme in Sociology of Law in 1990. His academic publications focus on conflict resolution through law, on legal cultures and on the importance of legal certainty in a globalized world. For his achievements, he received the Adam Podgòrecki price of the RCSL in 2013