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Prof. Dr. Silja Vöneky appointed judge at the Constitutional Court of Baden-Württemberg

The Landtag of Baden-Württemberg has elected Prof. Dr. Silja Vöneky, Professor of International Law, Comparative Law and Legal Ethics at the University of Freiburg, as a judge at the Constitutional Court.

Prof. Dr. Silja Vöneky is Director of the Institute of Public Law and Professor of Public International Law, Comparative Law and Legal Ethics at the University of Freiburg and a member of CIBSS. She will take up the honorary position as a member of the Constitutional Court for nine years.

Prof. Dr. Silja Vöneky. Image: Jürgen Gocke.

"I am grateful for the nomination and election and look forward to this honorable task. As I grew up, studied and did my doctorate in Baden-Württemberg, this is also an opportunity to give something back to the state in this role. I am very happy to do this, together with the other judges, precisely because these are challenging times for democracies."

Silja Vöneky's research focuses on international law and legal ethics, in particular the protection of the environment and human rights, international humanitarian law and the relationship between ethics and law, especially in the area of technology regulation. Together with colleagues, she leads and participates in interdisciplinary research initiatives and third-party funded projects, especially in the area of responsible regulation of artificial intelligence and adaptive regulation of new technologies. She has been a member of CIBBS since January 2019, researching legal and legal-ethical issues in biotechnology.

Vöneky studied law and legal philosophy at the Universities of Freiburg, Bonn, Edinburgh and Heidelberg. After completing her doctorate at the University of Heidelberg on the protection of the environment in armed conflicts and her legal traineeship at the Berlin Court of Appeal, she began her academic career at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. Since her habilitation at the University of Heidelberg with a thesis on "Law, Morality and Ethics", Vöneky has been teaching and researching at the University of Freiburg.

Involvement in interdisciplinary research networks and academic legal consultancy

Silja Vöneky is also a member of international research networks and has been a scientific legal advisor to various federal ministries since 2001, in particular the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry for the Environment and the Federal Environment Agency. At the suggestion of the Federal Government, she was appointed to the German Ethics Council for four years until 2016, where she headed the working group on biosecurity. Today, she is a member of the Advisory Council on International Law of the German Foreign Office, the Ethics Council of the Max Planck Society, and co-director of the Connecticut-Baden-Württemberg Human Rights Research Consortium (HRRC), funded by the state of Baden-Württemberg.

CIBSS-Profile of Prof. Dr. Silja Vöneky

Original Press release at the website of the University Freiburg