The IRWE - An Overview

The most important activities of the Institute for Water and Waste Management Law at the University of Bonn include:

• publishing the series “Das Recht der Wasser- und Entsorgungswirtschaft” (Water and Waste Management Law),
• regularly holding water law colloquiums at the University of Bonn, and
• hosting the North Rhine-Westphalia Environmental Law Days, one of the most important specialist conferences in the field of environmental protection in Germany.

The institute pursues the following objectives as part of its activities:

• to promote water law at the university in teaching in connection with all three main areas of German law—public law, civil law, and criminal law—in particular as a component of economic administrative law and environmental law;
  to organize a dialogue between water law teaching and research on the one hand and water management practice on the other
• to address the main issues of water law scientifically, propose practical solutions, and point out ways to improve the enforcement of water law
• to provide impetus for legislation in the field of water law, wastewater levy law, municipal drainage law, and environmental law as a whole,
• to explain the state of the art in literature and case law in the field of water law in continuing education courses and to discuss related issues of practical enforcement,
• to further develop water law as a model case for interdisciplinary research by highlighting the connections between legal, technical, economic, business, and administrative problems.

eventsThe long-established Institute for Water and Waste Management Law at the University of Bonn was founded in 1952 as the “Institute for Water Management Law” by the grand master of water law, Prof. Dr. Dr.-Ing. h.c. Paul Gieseke (1888-1967), who in turn continued his work in the Committee for Water Law (1934-1941) of the Academy for German Law during the Nazi era. Since then, the institute has been working in close contact between science and practice on dogmatically sound and practically applicable solutions for the field of water management. Historically, it is one of the oldest institutions dealing with environmental law issues.

The institute's achievements include its creative collaboration in the drafting of the Water Resources Act and the Wastewater Levy Act, as well as the state water laws of the new federal states. This pioneering legislative work was carried out under the leadership of the institute's second director, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Salzwedel (1929-2020), who headed the institute for almost 30 years after Paul Gieseke's departure in 1965 and helped establish water law as one of the most important sub-disciplines of environmental law.

With his appointment to Bonn in 1994, Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Breuer (*1940), the leading water law expert of his generation, was elected as the third director of the institute. He expanded the institute's field of activity to include waste management law.

Since March 2006, Prof. Dr. Dr. Wolfgang Durner (*1967) has been the acting fourth director of the institute in addition to his position as full professor of public law at the Faculty of Law and Political Science. Since then, he has organized over 130 events as part of the institute's work and supervised more than a dozen doctoral theses related to water and waste management law. A central topic in this context has been the implementation of the European Union's Water Framework Directive and European and international water law in general.