Posted on 11 June 2015
On the occasion of the EUI Degree Conferring Ceremony taking place on 12 June, Doctor Honoris Causa degrees were awarded to Gertrude Lübbe Wolf and Jean Tirole for their exceptional contributions in the fields of administrative and constitutional law and legal philosophy, and economics.
Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff is Professor of Public Law at the University of Bielefeld. She studied Law at the Universities of Bielefeld and Freiburg and at Harvard Law School (LL.M.). From 1988-1992 she was Director of the Environment Department of the municipal administration of Bielefeld. Since 1992 she has been Professor of Public Law at the University of Bielefeld. She served as Chairperson of the German Council of Environmental Advisors from 2000-2002, as the Executive Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld from 1996 to 2002, as member of the board of various national academic and professional societies in the years 1994-2002, and as Chairperson of the Advisory Board of the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, from 2003 to 2009. From 2002 to 2014, she was Judge of the Federal Constitutional Court (Second Senate). In 2000 Professor Lübbe-Wolff received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation, the highest award granted in Germany for outstanding research. In 2012 she received the Hegel Prize of the City of Stuttgart. Navigating between administrative law (most prominently environmental law), constitutional law and legal philosophy, Professor Lübbe-Wolff’s career successfully bridges the theoretical and applied domains of the public good. Over the last two decades her work has deeply shaped environmental law in Germany, and as Judge she has had a profound influence on the German Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence. She has been a prominent voice on the controversial relationship between the German Constitution and the international sphere, and her 2009 contribution on Hegel and the relationship between morals and institutions, using the environment as a case, is considered a masterpiece in legal philosophy.
Jean Tirole is chairman of the Foundation JJ Laffont-Toulouse School of Economics, and scientific director of the Institute for Industrial Economics, University ofToulouse Capitole. He is affiliated with MIT, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, of which he is a co-founder. He is ingénieur général des ponts, des eaux et des forêts. Jean Tirole has given over 80 distinguished lectures and is author of more than 200 publications. He holds multiple Honorary Doctorates and is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards including the Yrjö Jahnsson Prize of the European Economic Association, the CNRS Gold Medal, the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Awards in Economics, Finance and Management, the CME-MSRI Award, the Levi-Strauss Prize and the Ross Prize. He is the laureate of the 2014 Nemmers Prize in Economics and received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in the same year. He is a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Economic Association. He was elected to the Allais’ chair at the French Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 2011. Advancing the cutting edge of formal economic theory and bringing that theory to bear on a broad array of economic problems - most especially the problem of regulation in modern economies - his work has been instrumental in structural reform in a range of industries, including banking, energy and telecommunications. He has focused on the development of a coherent theoretical framework based on the principles of incomplete information, game theory and mechanism design emphasizing the different nature of different industries and the range of problems they face including the problem of regulatory capture. His work has not only deepened our understanding of how real economies work, but has had immense practical value for managing our economies during normal times and during times of crisis.
Read the interview with Jean Tirole