Further information on the curriculum vitae, publications, lectures and third-party funded projects of Prof. Dr. Prof. h.c. Thomas M.J. M?llers.

Contact information of the secretary`s office, research assistants and student assistants as well as lecturers and honorary professors.

All information regarding the courses and the main research interest of the chair as well as the doctorate.

08.09.2025

The article "Conflicting Regulatory Objectives in Data Protection Law - A Comparative Law Analysis Considering the Legal Culture in the EU, The US, and the PR ChinaData" published in "Osservatorio del Diritto Civile e Commerciale" compares the most important principles of data proteciton law in Europe, the USA and the PRC: Data is the oil of the 21st century. Yet despite its global relevance, data protection is regulated very differently in the EU, the US, and the People's Republic of China, the world's major eco-nomic centers. This analysis describes the respective legal and cultural backgrounds of the various economic power houses in order to explain the different approaches towards data protection. Comparative law seeks to assess the feasibility of legal transplants. The role of legal culture in this regard has previously been understated. The following deliberations attempt to use the example of data protection to illustrate how culture shapes perceptions of justice and how similarity of these perceptions is a precondition for legal transplants.

20.08.2025

In September 2024, the German section of the International Association for Legal and Social Philosophy held a conference on “Methods of Law” at the University of Bayreuth. The conference proceedings (edited by Professor Carsten B?cker) have now been published and include Professor M?llers' essay “The Legal Methods of the Federal Court of Justice in Civil Matters, Potential for Optimization. Courts often apply a more practical form of legal doctrine. Decisions that make extensive use of the full canon of available legal arguments are rare. Legal reasoning must meet formal and substantive requirements to allow for a review for plausibility and manifest error. Essential in this regard are methodological transparency and a cumulative application of legal methods. Four areas of methodological deficiency can be identified in the reasoning of the legal decisions in civil matters of the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH): overruling of case law that is not adequately disclosed, the reliance on supposed ‘stop-rules’ in the development of the law, legal innovations that are insufficiently substantiated, and an often overly brief presentation of the facts.

20.8.2025

The 3rd EU-China Young Jurists' Forum, initiated and sponsored by the European-Chinese Center for Legal Research and Innovation, opened on July 25, 2025, at the Faculty of Law of the University of Cologne and continued on July 29 with another session at the Faculty of Law of Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands). This year's forum focused on “New Fields and Developments in European-Chinese Legal Research” and was jointly organized by the University of Cologne and Radboud University.