Curriculum Vitae

Björn Ahl is Professor and Chair of Chinese Legal Culture. Before joining the University of Cologne in 2012, he was Visiting Professor of Chinese Law, Comparative Public Law and International Law in the China EU School of Law at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. Prior to that he held a position as Assistant Professor of Law in the City University of Hong Kong. He has also worked as Associate Director and Lecturer in the Sino German Institute of Legal Studies of Nanjing University and as a Researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg.

He received a doctorate in law from the University of Heidelberg in 2008 and passed the second state examination in law in 2001. Prior to that he served as a legal clerk in the Heidelberg District Court, Local Court and Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Administrative Appellate Court of Baden-Württemberg and the Legal Department of the Regional Administrative Council in Karlsruhe. He completed the first state examination with distinction in 1999. Björn Ahl studied law and Chinese language at the Universities of Heidelberg and Nanjing with scholarships of the German National Scholarship Foundation and the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Stiftung.

Björn Ahl is President of the European China Law Studies Association; Fellow at the Center for Chinese Law of the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law; and Board Member of the Sino German Jurists Association.

 

Selected Publications

• Interaction of National Law-Making and International Treaties: The Implementation of the Convention Against Torture in China, forthcoming in: Zhao Yun, Michael Ng (eds.), Chinese Legal Reform and the Global Legal Order: Adoption and Adaptation, Cambridge University Press 2017 (Download)

• China's New Global Presence and Its Position Towards Public International Law: Obeying, Using or Shaping? Forthcoming in: Lutz-Christian Wolff, Chao Xi (eds), Legal Dimensions of One Belt One Road, CCH Hong Kong 2016 (Download)
  

• Modern Chinese Court Buildings, Regime Legitimacy and the Public (co-authored with Hendrik Tieben), International Journal for the Semiotics of Law – Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique, Vol. 28, 2015, 603–626. (Download)
  
  
• The Rise of China and International Human Rights Law, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 37, 2015, 637–661. (Download)
  
  
• Retaining Judicial Professionalism: the New Case Guiding Mechanism of the Supreme People’s Court, The China Quarterly, Vol. 217, 2014, 121–139. (Download)
  
  
• The Delineation of Treaty-making Powers between the Central Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, Vol. 31, 2013, 116–135. (Download)
  
  
• Statements of the Chinese Government before Human Rights Treaty Bodies: Doctrine and Practice of Treaty Implementation, The Australian Journal of Asian Law, Vol. 12, 2010, 82–105. (Download)
  
  
• Exploring Ways of Implementing International Human Rights Treaties in China, Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 28, 2010, 361–403. (Download)