Philipp Renninger

Biography

Philipp Renninger is a Visiting Assistant Professor and Assistant Director for Global Engagement at Seattle University School of Law. Before joining Seattle, he taught as a Global Professor of Practice, Law (China), at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. Prof. Renninger also held a Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship at Harvard Law School, sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation. In addition, he is affiliated with the Max Planck Institute Frankfurt as well as with Nanjing University's Sino-German Institute for Legal Studies.

Prof. Renninger's first research focus lies on constitutional and administrative law, particularly federalism, individual rights, urban and local government, and environmental law. He has a second key interest in jurisprudence, exploring the foundations of law through the lens of legal theory, philosophy, history, and methodology. Throughout those research areas, Prof. Renninger adopts a both domestic and global, comparative and international, perspective: In addition to English, he publishes in three foreign languages (German, Chinese, and Spanish); and in addition to the U.S., he has gained extensive expertise in and on Asia (China and the Sinosphere) as well as in and on Europe (EU, UK, Switzerland, and his native Germany).

Prof. Renninger holds a dual-degree PhD in law from the Universities of Freiburg and Lucerne. Previously, he read law as well as Chinese in Freiburg and Nanjing, graduating with the German First Exam in Law (JD equivalent). Prof. Renninger has held visiting research and adjunct teaching appointments at the University of Oxford, King's College London, NUS Singapore, the China University of Political Science and Law, and the Max Planck Institutes.