Siegfried Wiessner: Championing Human Flourishing for All

A Life in Pursuit of Human Dignity

Our Series is named after a remarkable man. Siegfried Wiessner’s scholarship addresses urgent social issues, both domestic and international, with a view to developing solutions that contribute to a public order of human dignity. In analogy to physicians, he sees lawyers as “doctors of the social order.” In the tradition of the New Haven School of Jurisprudence, he conceives law as a dynamic process of both authoritative and controlling decision. Thanks to its exhaustive interdisciplinary research, analytical depth and rigorous craftsmanship, judicious appraisal of past and projected future decisions, and thoughtful and innovative proposals, his scholarship has had a profound influence.

His analyses of existing law in his teaching and scholarship are precise, but Siegfried does not worship at the altar of positivism’s idol of the golden calf of unalterable rules and institutions. To the contrary, he exposes the fallacies and sterilizing effect of extreme positivism and then shows how much can be accomplished once liberated from it. He sees Positivism as remaining fixated on the past, trying to reap from words laid down, irrespective of the context in which they were written, the solution to a problem that arises today or tomorrow in very different circumstances. Without identifying the conditioning factors of past decisions—such as personality, political inclinations, gender, cultural background, and societal factors—positivists try hard, in an ultimately futile quest for legal certainty, to predict future decisions. But because they fail to account for changing contexts, their predictions are unlikely to be precise; they may even be inaccurate. Moreover, positivists gain no help from their theory when asked what the law should be, as their theory eschews any creative or prescriptive function.

Siegfried is respected around the world as an authoritative scholar of human rights law, especially the plight of indigenous peoples, as well as an ardent advocate for the oppressed. In all these endeavors, Siegfried’s base of power is his scholarship. Siegfried has published widely in Constitutional Law, International Law, Jurisprudence, the Rule of Law, Space Law, International Arbitration, the Law of Armed Conflict, and International Indigenous Law.

Being polyglot, Siegfried relishes engaging with people worldwide in their own languages, whether in Spanish, English, German, or French. For Siegfried, the world is one big human family, and he embraces life across the globe—from Alaska to Antarctica, Mongolia to Tanzania, and Israel to Ecuador. His devotion to the diversity of cultures reflects his deep commitment to human dignity: he sees diversity as a goal to be celebrated not in standing apart, but in joining hands to establish an order free of discrimination and subordination. At seventy, his scholarship continues to exhibit a vibrant, bel canto quality, keeping readers engaged with the passion and musicality that law can carry. Siegfried continues to press forward, living by his motto, “I dance through life,” and remaining a bright guiding light for all who cross his path.

Early Life and Career

Johann Siegfried Thomas Wiessner was born in Gerhardshofen, a Franconian village in southern Germany. His ancestors, traditional farmers in Gerhardshofen, trace their lineage in records to 1705. But they settled earlier in 1666, seeking religious freedom. The family’s heraldic sign, with prominent pine trees and fish, symbolizes life, growth, and connection to the land, as well as longevity and resilience: values embodied by many of the causes Wiessner would go on to champion throughout his life.

His father, the mayor during Wiessner’s youth, brought industry to the village. Naturally, his motive for writing has been to enlist the law for those who most urgently need it: the underprivileged, the poor, and the marginalized.

It was expected that Wiessner, his only son, would follow family tradition, but Wiessner turned early to the Academy. He finished high school in 1972 and studied law at the Universities of Erlangen, Geneva, and Tübingen, passing the state bar exams in Baden-Württemberg. In 1977, Professor Hans von Mangoldt invited him to join his team as a research and teaching associate.

Wiessner’s maiden article introduced the idea of a necessary procedural dimension to the right to asylum, uniquely inserted in the German Basic Law. While a 1977 government decree mandated border police to disregard asylum applications deemed “evidently abusive,” Wiessner argued that the subjective right to asylum required substantively competent agencies to review these applications. The Federal Constitutional Court agreed and declared the decree unconstitutional, yielding a momentous impact on German refugee law. Thereafter, in his doctoral thesis under Professor von Mangoldt, Wiessner questioned the conventional notion that nationality is a nudum ius devoid of legal consequences beyond state discretion. In a global comparative study, he found that across virtually all legal systems, distinctive legal consequences attach to the function of nationality transnationally.

From Tübingen to Yale: A Jurisprudential Liberation

In 1979, Wiessner met Keith Nunes, a young South African. This life-changing meeting liberated Siegfried from the straitjacket of positivism and, in an intellectual rebirth, introduced him to the New Haven School of Jurisprudence. In 1982, Siegfried joined the LL.M. Program at Yale Law School. He worked closely with thesis supervisor Michael Reisman and had many meetings with Professor Myres Smith McDougal.

When McDougal became ill, he asked Siegfried to deliver the Cordell Hull Centennial Lecture on Law and Peace at Cumberland School of Law in 1991 on his behalf. They also co-authored the introductory update to McDougal’s treatment of the law of war, Law and Minimum World Public Order, and collaborated on international arbitrations.

Siegfried applied the New Haven approach rigorously in his article on the scarcity of orbital positions and frequencies in geostationary satellite orbit. His creative solutions for equitable resource sharing were published in the journal of the International Telecommunication Union, sparking an invitation to join the International Institute of Space Law.

Together with Andrew R. Willard, he represented the approach in a 1999 American Society of International Law symposium on international legal theory addressing serious human rights abuses in internal conflict. Wiessner added to policy-oriented jurisprudence the designation of a lawyer as a “doctor of the social order,” diagnosing social ills using all relevant knowledge and crafting remedial programs specifically designed for societal problems.

Michael Reisman, affectionately called “the Dean” of the New Haven School, has been Siegfried’s mentor and close friend for many years. With Mahnoush Arsanjani and Gayl Westerman, they published International Law in Contemporary Perspective. Siegfried also co-edited Looking to the Future in honor of Michael Reisman, and wrote a brilliant historical introduction to General Theory of International Law, an anthology of American classics in international law he edited and published in 2017.

Wiessner worked with Reisman on international investment arbitrations, particularly within the ICSID system. Prior to teaching, he practiced international commercial arbitration with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, where he was of counsel on a successful amicus curiae brief twice cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc.

Indigenous Peoples

While Wiessner continued to work across these areas, his primary passion has been the law affecting indigenous peoples. In 1993 and 1994, he gave lectures on the legal status and empowerment of indigenous peoples at the Sovereignty Symposium in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There he met Susan Ferrell, a HUD attorney advisor and advocate for the underprivileged, who became his Muse and introduced him to indigenous culture. Together with Kiowa leader Kirke Kickingbird, they devised a Tribal Sovereignty Symposium in Miami, bringing indigenous issues and scholars to St. Thomas University. Tragically, Susan was killed shortly thereafter in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and was later honored at St. Thomas with the establishment of the Susan J. Ferrell Intercultural Human Rights Moot Court Competition.

At the first conference on tribal sovereignty, Wiessner presented a fundamental reassessment of U.S. treaties with Indian nations, viewing them as agreements of an international law character rather than domestic contracts. In 1999, his survey in the Harvard Human Rights Journal demonstrated customary international law rights of indigenous peoples to traditional lands, resources, cultural heritage, and autonomy.

His lecture on The Rights and Status of Indigenous Peoples is a permanent part of the Audiovisual Library of the United Nations. Locally, he helped preserve an indigenous sacred site, the Miami Circle.

Elected chairperson of the International Law Association’s Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2008, Wiessner drew on thirty global experts to draft ILA Resolution No. 5/2012, which affirmed customary and conventional international law rights of indigenous peoples to self-determination, autonomy, cultural heritage, and their traditional lands and resources.

Internationally, Wiessner has also done indispensable work on group rights and vulnerable minorities, acknowledging that groups of meaning to individuals are essential extensions of self and necessary parts of identity. Culture is a group phenomenon that cannot be developed by solipsistic individual effort. He recognizes that, in order to respond holistically to human needs, we must protect both individuals and relevant groups.

Domestically, Wiessner amplified his research in Constitutional Law, writing on federalism, presidential powers, the status of Washington, D.C., and the rule of law. He helped support democratic transitions in Eastern Europe after the collapse of Communism by serving as a human rights instructor in Poland, assessing draft minority laws in Romania and press laws in Latvia, and evaluating USAID rule of law programs across Central and Eastern Europe.

Everywhere he has gone, he has followed one star: the guiding light of an order of human dignity. In his visit to Mongolia in 2015, for example, he rendered advice and drafted comments on the new Mongolian Criminal Procedure Code from the perspective of German, comparative and international human rights law at the invitation of The Honorable Erdenebat Ganbat, The Deputy General Prosecutor of Mongolia, meeting with representatives of the Mongolian legislature, judiciary, prosecutor’s offices and law enforcement personnel. Just a year later, in Germany, he engaged faculty and students at the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Faculty of Law, on the issue of differences and commonalities in teaching law in the United States and Germany. Then, he moved over to Israel, at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Geography and the University of Haifa Law School to participate in the workshop on The Legal Geography of Indigenous Communities: The Bedouins in Comparative Perspective.

St. Thomas University

St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens, Florida has been Wiessner’s academic home since 1985. In 1990, he became the first Professor of Law tenured through the ranks.

On Constitution Day 2022, his lecture Reading the Constitution recommended filling open concepts of the U.S. foundational document with the values of the New Haven School, maximizing access by all to the processes of shaping and sharing human values: power, wealth, affection, well-being, enlightenment, skills, respect, and rectitude.

This end of human flourishing also undergirds the LL.M. Program in Intercultural Human Rights, which Wiessner started in 2001 and developed alongside Co-Director Professor Roza Pati, graduating over 500 students from more than 90 countries. In 2005, they expanded this graduate framework with a J.S.D. degree program and the Intercultural Human Rights Law Review.

Nothing has made Wiessner happier than teaching, and students remain at the center of his concern. He encourages students to challenge decisions, formulate defended opinions, and analyze black letter law critically. This mastery prepares them for the legal profession, where open-ended fields like constitutional law demand critical scrutiny and alternative decision-making.

Teaching his students to evaluate past decisions and recommendations of future ones in light of logical standards of coherence, experience, and preferred ideas of moral and social order, he brings out the best in them. It was therefore no surprise that, in 2013, Lawyers to the Rescue named him Law Professor of the Year.

Scholarship Celebration

In 2023, Wiessner was honored by a festschrift put together by Professors Michael Reisman and Roza Pati: Human Flourishing: The End of Law. Spanning over a thousand pages and boasting 39 articles from scholars all over the world, this collection of essays is proof of the diverse friendships that have shaped his life, as much he has shaped theirs.

But his friends are not only scholars. Being polyglot, Wiessner relishes talking with the rank-and-file, diving into new cultures and speaking with everyday people in their own language. All of those who know him recall the warm wisdom of his fluent Spanish, English or French, sometimes seasoned with a slight German accent, and his incessant inclination to seek the betterment of a public order that allows for the shaping and sharing, the production and the distribution of all human values: power, wealth, affection, well-being, enlightenment, skills, respect, and rectitude. He is there with the people, groups, communities, helping them articulate what base and scope values they have, and at their side, when such values are threatened, analytical in his written work, or speaking out at various fora, whether at the UN or at the legislative, executive, or judicial institutions of various countries.

The appreciation of his peers worldwide is also demonstrated by his selection to chair the ILA Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to serve as Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (2009), to serve as member of the Executive Council of The American Society of International Law (2007-2010), and in many other appointments.

The Lecture Series

In order to honor and promote the pursuit of excellence and human dignity embodied by Wiessner’s career, the College of Law, through the generosity of its donors, has endowed in perpetuity the Siegfried Wiessner Human Flourishing Distinguished Lecture Series.