Fellow 2021-2022 HOLGER HESTERMEYER
Term: 09/2021 – 08/2022
Holger Hestermeyer is a Professor of International and EU Law at King's College London. He is a graduate of the universities of Münster and UC Berkeley, holds a Ph.D. from the university of Hamburg, and is admitted to the New York state bar and the German bar.
Before joining King’s College London, Holger worked as a researcher and, later, leader of a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law in Heidelberg. He left Heidelberg for Luxembourg where he joined the cabinet of the Spanish Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the EU as a Référendaire. From there, he joined King's College London as the Shell Reader in International Dispute Resolution.
Holger has published widely on constitutional, international, and EU law, including a monograph on TRIPS and access to medicines which was awarded an Otto Hahn Medal, an Otto Hahn Award and the ISUS prize and a monograph on federalism in Germany, the US and the EU; with which he was awarded the Habilitation qualification.
Holger advises on international and EU law, has served as a Specialist Adviser to the EU External Affairs Sub-Committee and the EU Select Committee of the House of Lords and is a past Co-executive Vice President of the Society of International Economic Law.
Holger has given expert testimony to parliamentary committees of the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the Scottish Parliament and the German Bundestag, is frequently cited in the domestic and international media and has appeared on the BBC, Euronews, and Deutschlandfunk. Holger speaks German, Italian, Spanish and French.
He spends much of his spare time losing at board games against his two kids and his wife.
INTERVIEW WITH CAPAS FELLOW HOLGER HESTERMEYER
The Law and Policy of Disintegration
The rules-based system of international governance is under attack. On the one hand, it is overwhelmed by the demands imposed on it by a world in crisis. Catastrophes ranging from climate change to the mass-extinction of species and pandemics demand international cooperation like never before. Far from being scaled up, however, international governance is crumbling. The Security Council of the United Nations is notoriously blocked. The World Trade Organization seems incapable of reaching agreement and, worse, the highest body of its "judicial branch"— the so-called “Appellate Body” – has become dysfunctional. In Europe, the United Kingdom left the European Union without a plan for how to replace the close cooperation that characterizes the Union. To respond to these challenges the project intends to inquire what drives the disintegration processes of the international system and how they compare to past processes of disintegration, develop alternative visions for international governance and work on legal models for disintegration processes.