Professor Bohlander from Durham University (UK) is one of the six new visiting chairs established by the Groningen Centre for Law and Governance. He will hold the Visiting Chair in Criminal Law and be attached to the Department of Criminal Law for the next four years; he will liaise with the staff from Groningen in projects and activities aimed at the internationalisation of the Department and its research. This will take the shape of cooperation in joint research projects, helping to organise conferences and symposia, consulting with colleagues on their publications and generally lending support in establishing a sustainable international research network. He will also give lectures on the Proof, Evidence and Law module of the LLM.
Before joining Durham Law School in 2004, Michael Bohlander had been a member of the German judiciary since 1991, sitting in both criminal and civil court at all levels of the Thuringian state judiciary, including the State Supreme Court, dealing with serious crime by adult and juvenile offenders, judicial rehabilitation of persons convicted for political reasons in the former GDR, general civil as well as medical malpractice litigation. He received his doctorate in law in 1992 from the University of the Saarland, Germany, with a thesis on British duty solicitor schemes and the implementation of a similar model in German criminal procedure. He was a barrister's pupil at what is now Walnut House Chambers in Exeter from 1989 to 1990. From 1999 until 2001 he served as the Senior Legal Officer of a Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague. He has presented papers in Europe, the United States, Asia, Africa and the Arab world and trained judges, prosecutors and government officials from Kosovo, Egypt, Palestine, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait as well as from Iraq, including the Iraqi High Tribunal which tried Saddam Hussein.
Professor Bohlander is the editor-in-chief of the International Criminal Law Review, the general editor of Studies in International and Comparative Criminal Law and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Criminal Law. He is a member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and of the AHRC Peer Review College. His writing on comparative and German law has been cited by the German Federal Constitutional Court, the German Federal Court of Justice, several State Supreme Courts and District Courts. His publications on international criminal law have been cited by the Special Court for Sierra Leone and before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. He is maintaining an English translation of the German Criminal Code on the official website of the German Federal Ministry of Justice.
He has published 10 books and over 110 articles, essays, chapters etc. His research interests and areas of expertise include:
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German criminal law and procedure
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International criminal justice - Theory, practice, political and socio-legal implications
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Comparative criminal law and procedure
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Transitional justice and the rule of law in post-conflict societies
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Islamic criminal justice, its reform and relation to secular legal systems
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The judiciary and legal profession - Comparative, international and socio-legal aspects
More information on professor Bohlander can be found on the website of Durham University and on his
'medewerkerspagina' of the University of Groningen.
