Peter Landau

Peter Landau (born 26 February 1935 in Berlin) is a German jurist, legal historian and expert on canon law.

After going to school in Berlin and Eisenberg, Thuringia, Landau studied law, history, and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin, at University of Freiburg, and University of Bonn. After graduating, he served as the assistant of Stephan Kuttner at Yale University. After his doctoral promotion in 1964 and a habilitating in 1964, Landau accepted a call to University of Regensburg where he became a regular professor. In 1970/71 he served as Prorector of that university and in 1978/79 he was the Dean of the faculty of law. His career includes research at University of California, Berkeley (1977) and a lecturer's post as a visiting professor at University of Chicago (1984). In 1985 he was accepted into the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. When Landau had rejected calls to University of Frankfurt and University of California, Berkeley, he became professor of German legal history, recent history of private law, church law, civil law, and for philosophy of law and politics at University of Munich. This office included the post as director of the Leopold Wenger Institute for Legal History. While in Munich, Landau served also as the dean of the Legal Faculty from 1993 to 1995.

In 1990/91 Landau visited the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. He was president of the Society for Medieval Canon Law at Zurich, Switzerland, from 1988 to 2000 and since 1993 he is a member of the advisory board of the Max Planck Institute for European History of Law at Frankfurt am Main. He is also president of the Stephan Kuttner Institute of Medieval Canon Law. Landau is considered one of the leading experts on canon law worldwide and has mostly worked on medieval church law, and evangelical church law. He is moreover interested in philosophy of law and political philosophy. Landau holds honorary doctorates of the Institute of Canon Law at University of Munich, of University of Basel and Panthéon-Assas University.

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