Department of East Asian Law
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
on 1 February 2025, the Department of Japanese law was renamed “Department of East Asian Law” to better reflect our expanded offerings and focus. You can find our new website here. (German Version)
All old links will redirect you to our new website and we can still be reached via our usual contact methods.
Your team of the Department of East Asian Law
The Department of East Asian Law can look back on a 35-year long history. As early as 1990 its predecessor existed at the chair of Prof Dr Dr hc Eisenhardt in form of a specialisation on study and research of Japanese law. Starting at the year 2000, there was a separate Institute for Japanese Law, which was integrated into the Institute for International Legal Relations as the Department of Japanese Law in 2016 and headed by Prof Dr Hans-Peter Marutschke. Since September 2020, Jun-Prof Dr Julius Weitzdörfer LLB BA DiplJur MA (Cantab)has been working as Junior Professor of East Asian Law at the University of Hagen. Under his leadership, the Department of Japanese Law was further developed and modernized and the expansion of teaching to include Korean and Taiwanese law was initiated. In order to better represent the departments expanded offering, the department was renamed to “Department of East Asian Law” on 1 February 2025.
The tasks of the Department are wide-ranging. One particularly important area is the further development and expansion of degree programmes in East Asian law. First and foremost is the „Foundations of Japanese Law“ course, which is organised as an executive education programme in accordance with § 62 HG NRW. Furthermore, an elective module called "Introduction to Japanese Law" has been integrated into the undergraduate Master of Laws (LLM) programme at the University of Hagen, which is offered by the Department every semester. In 2025, the executive education programmes “Foundations of Korean Law” and later “Foundations of Taiwanese Law” will be added. The content of the courses on Korean and Taiwanese law has been designed with the same structure and topics as the existing course on Japanese law, so that all three can be offered as a modular LL.M. of East Asian Law in the future. In addition to teaching and supervising theses, the Department has its own research focus, which has gained recognition in Germany and Japan.
The Department maintains contacts with the law faculties and law schools of all important state and private universities in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. This network has been made possible by the involvement of numerous well-known Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese professors in the degree programmes on East Asian law and in various research projects. Formal cooperation with the Dōshisha Law School was established in 2024. Similar collaborations are being prepared with the aim of enabling short study trips to Korea and Taiwan for participants in the respective executive education programme. In addition, students from these universities are to be offered a platform for the comparative study of German law and for the preparation of short study visits to Germany.
