Dieter Grimm: Advocate of the Constitution

Dieter Grimm is one of the foremost scholars of constitutional law, constitutional theory, and European law in Germany and worldwide. His jurisprudential writings have found a large English-language audience in works such as Constitutionalism: Past, Present, and Future and The Constitution of European Democracy. This book is a conversation between Grimm and three scholars of constitutional law - Oliver Lepsius, Christian Waldhoff, and Matthias Rossbach - on his background, his childhood under the Nazi regime and the ruins of post-war Germany, his education in Germany, France, and the United States, his academic achievements, the main subjects of his research, his experience as a judge on a leading constitutional court (especially in the time of pivotal changes in the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall), and his views on actual challenges for law and society. Grimm also speaks about his attitude toward European integration where he is best known for his thesis that one of the biggest but least noticed causes for the lack of democratic legitimacy of the EU is its ‘over-constitutionalization’. The book is an invaluable source of information on an outstanding career and the functioning of constitutional adjudication that the reader would not find in legal textbooks or treatises. The Times Literary Supplement, reviewing the German edition, stated: For anyone wishing to understand the respect for the rule of law in modern Germany, this book is highly recommended.