Biography
Patrick Abel is Assistant Professor (Akademischer Rat a.Z.) at the University of Passau, Germany. As a Max Weber Fellow, Patrick is researching the role of the State and the EU in the ‘Great Transformation’ towards a decarbonised economy and society. He explores how constitutional law governs this process, and how this process may in turn, even if inadvertently, change fundamental concepts of constitutional law. Patrick’s research interests further include EU and international economic law – especially its interaction with environmental law –, energy law, and German constitutional law, EU law and public international law more broadly.
Patrick is a fully qualified German lawyer (First and Second German State Exams in Law) with a German and Colombian background. He holds a Magister Juris degree from the University of Oxford and a PhD from the University of Göttingen, Germany. His dissertation in international investment law on ‘International Investor Obligations’ won several awards, including the 2022 Roman Herzog Award for the best dissertation on the social market economy in 2021, and the 2022 Körber Prize for Doctoral Studies for the second-best German dissertation in the humanities in 2021.
Patrick publishes and teaches on the full range of German constitutional law, EU law and international law. He has advised state institutions, NGOs, national and international companies on legal issues of decarbonisation and sustainability, including as an expert for the German Bundestag’s Committee on Climate Action and Energy.