Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (; 19 September 1930 – 24 February 2019) was a German legal scholar and a justice on Germany's Federal Constitutional Court. He was a professor at the University of Freiburg and the author of more than 20 books and 80 articles dealing with legal and constitutional theory, as well as political theory, political philosophy and Catholic political thought. Böckenförde was considered a member of the Ritter School.

Life Böckenförde was born on 19 September 1930 in Kassel. His parents were forester Josef Böckenförde (1894–1962) and his wife Gertrud (née Merrem; 1899–1977). As a child, he attended the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Kassel, where he passed his Abitur.

Böckenförde received a PhD in law in Münster in 1956, for a dissertation he wrote under the supervision of Hans Julius Wolff. He also received a PhD in history in 1960 from LMU Munich

Böckenförde served as a member of the second senate of the Federal Constitutional Court from 1983 until 1996. Into his tenure fall several path-breaking decisions for the Federal Republic of Germany, including decisions pertaining to the deployment of missiles, the law of political parties, and the legal regulation of abortion. He was also a practising Catholic. As such, he worked in several institutions, including the , a circle of Catholic intellectuals, as well as serving as a counsel for the Central Committee of German Catholics. From 1971 until 1976 Böckenförde was a member of the Special Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Reform. the order of merit of the state of Baden-Württemberg (2003), the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought (2004), the Sigmund Freud Prize for scholarly prose (2012), and the Grand Cross of Merit (2016), the highest tribute the Federal Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for services to the nation.

Böckenförde last lived in Au near Freiburg, where he died on 24 February 2019, aged 88.

Writings (English translation) Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1991): State, Society, and Liberty: Studies in Political Theory and Constitutional Law. Berg, New York. "Carl Schmitt Revisited". Telos 109 (Fall 1996). New York: Telos Press. "The Concept of the Political as the Key to Understanding Carl Schmitt’s Constitutional Theory", in The Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, January 1997, Vol. 10, 5. (Translated by Heiner Bielefeldt from "Der Begriff des Politischen als Schlüssel zum staatsrechtlichen Werk Carl Schmitts (1988)"). Constitutional and Political Theory: Selected Writings, edited by Mirjam Künkler and Tine Stein, Oxford University Press 2017. Religion, Law, and Democracy: Selected Writings, edited by Mirjam Künkler and Tine Stein, Oxford University Press 2021.