Professor Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem, LL.M. (Berkeley), was director of the Hans-Bredow-Institut from 1979 until he became Senator of Justice for the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg from September 1995 to November 1997. He was also chairman of the newly created executive board of the institute from July 1998 to December 1999. Since December 1999, he has been an honorary member of the Executive Board.
He studied law in Hamburg, Freiburg, Munich, and Berkeley. He has been a professor of public law and administrative science at the University of Hamburg since 1974 and has been emeritus since 2008.
From 1999 to 2008, he was a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court (First Senate).
From 2007 to 2019, Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem was a member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission of the Council of Europe). He was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin from 2009 to 2010. Since mid-2012, he has been an affiliate professor at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg.
The German President awarded Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He is also the recipient of the Emil von Sauer Prize. In 2024, he received an honorary doctorate from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.
Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem researched and taught at Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, Tulane Law School, Hastings College of the Law, and the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. He was a member of the Expert Commission on New Media in Baden-Württemberg; the Inquiry Commission on New Information and Communication Technologies of the German Bundestag; the Inquiry Commission on Parliamentary Reform of the Parliament of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg; and the “Commission on Media Responsibility,” which was appointed by Federal President von Weizsäcker. He publishes works on media law, media social science, constitutional and administrative law, economic and environmental law, police law, and legal sociology.
