States and international institutions face the dual task of ensuring stability while also enabling change. Dr. Anne Dienelt explores how they can use law as a tool for this purpose and where its limits lie.
She will take over the chair for Public Law and International Law, particularly for sustainability and resilience research, at the University of Saarland on June 25. On June 22, Science Minister Jakob von Weizsäcker appointed the new professor, who will strengthen the university's strategic focus areas in sustainability and interdisciplinary European research.
Reliability, predictability, stability – these are the expectations that citizens have of state legal systems. Yet today, states and international institutions are reaching limits that existing law did not anticipate. “When island states in the Pacific ask whether they can continue to exist as states even if their territory sinks into the sea, centuries-old legal concepts are no longer sufficient. And when international protection promises, for example for climate refugees, fail because responsibilities and categories are lacking, it becomes clear how far the legal toolkit falls short of the challenges,” says Anne Dienelt, new professor of Public Law and International Law with a focus on sustainability and resilience research at Saarland University.
The jurist investigates the question of whether and how states and international institutions can apply and develop the law in such a way that they learn from these crises. "And without compromising the principles that define the rule of law: the binding of power to law, the protection of fundamental and human rights, and democratic legitimacy," explains Anne Dienelt, who is moving from the Institute for International Affairs at the University of Hamburg to the Saarbrücken campus. Here, she will simultaneously strengthen the focus areas of sustainability and Europe and, due to her expertise in European research and her French collaborations, will be closely involved in the work of the Cluster for European Studies (CEUS) at the university.
The focus of her research is the impacts of climate change. "Climate change is a central subject of sustainability law and at the same time the toughest stress test for the learning constitutional state: The question is whether states and international institutions can use the law in a way that allows them not only to react but also to act proactively," explains the legal scholar.
Two focal points in research on sustainability and resilience
Against this background, her work focuses on the law of sustainability at the interface between science and society. On the one hand, she investigates questions such as how state and international actors translate scientific climate knowledge into law, how scientific findings become the basis for legislation, international treaties, and judicial decisions, and what transformation and loss processes occur in this context. On the other hand, she explores the role that citizen science can play in legal processes: "Citizens are increasingly collecting data themselves, for example, to measure local climate changes or the condition of ecosystems. This raises the question of the legitimacy of this knowledge in courts and legislation, and how it changes the relationship between civil society and law-applying actors," explains Dienelt.
She also sheds light on the topic of climate lawsuits. “Civil society actors, associations, and affected states initiate such strategic climate lawsuits to compel states and companies to comply with their protective obligations. My research pays special attention to the European legal sphere: The European Union has created a legal framework for climate-related law with the Green Deal and the accompanying legislative package; at the same time, the European Court of Human Rights is advancing state protective obligations through its climate jurisprudence,” says Dienelt.
In a second major focus, the new professor researches how states and international institutions can use law to strengthen resilient and learning-capable structures. She examines which legal structures and instruments enable the state to learn from crises, adapt, and act proactively. “The law can create conditions for the state and society that enable and structure learning: through evaluation obligations, adaptive regulatory approaches, institutionalized monitoring, or enforceable protection duties. The example of climate change shows where existing instruments fail and where legislators, courts, and international institutions would need to act reformatively,” explains the legal scholar.
Innovative Teaching and Science Communication
In addition to research, Anne Dienelt places special emphasis on practice-oriented teaching and the dialogue between science and the public. Her teaching project on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which closely links legal studies and science communication, received particular attention: On the second anniversary of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, Dienelt, together with 14 law students from different semesters, published a multimedia digital exhibition on international legal issues of the war. Short, easily understandable summaries were created from regular seminar papers, supplemented by illustrations from the artist Marlin Beringer. The project was funded by the Claussen-Simon Foundation for Universities and is accessible at
At Saarland University, Anne Dienelt wants to develop practice-oriented teaching formats with Saarbrücken students that combine legal analysis with public impact and involve students early on in dialogue with society and practice.
Career
Anne Dienelt studied law in Tübingen, Aix-en-Provence, and Göttingen and earned her doctorate in Göttingen with a dissertation on environmental protection in armed conflict.
Her dissertation "Armed Conflicts and the Environment — Complementing the Laws of Armed Conflict with International Environmental Law and Human Rights Law" was published as a book by Springer in 2022. As part of her research projects, she spent time at New York University School of Law, the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Lund University in Sweden, as well as at the United Nations International Law Commission in Geneva.
Most recently, she worked as a temporary Academic Councillor at the Institute for International Affairs at the Faculty of Law at the University of Hamburg, where she conducts research as part of her habilitation project “Resilience, State & Law - The Learning Rule of Law.” Dienelt was also an associate Young Academy Fellow at the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg and continues to lead the interdisciplinary project group “Resilience and Diversity in Complex Systems” there as spokesperson.
