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Obituary
RUSSELL A. MILLER*
Donald P Kommers-German Constitutional Law's
Ambassador to the World
The Bundestag maintains
and publishes a smart English-
language translation of the
Grundgesetz. The project required
some poor soul to render Gemein-
desteuerkraftzuweisungen (Article
107(2)) into the English phrase
municipal tax-base grants. But
the painstaking work involved in
translating the Basic Law was paid
for with the singular privilege of
translating the document's more
inspiring provisions for a world-
wide English-speaking reader-
ship of scholars, judges, and policy
makers. Non-German speakers
now also have access to the Basic
Law's soaring constitutional com-
mitments, such as human dignity
shall be inviolable (Article 1(1)),
all state authority is derived from
the people (Article 20(2)), and
capital punishment is abolished
(Article 102).
University of Notre Dame
Professor Donald P. Kommers
(in collaboration with Humboldt
Professor Christian Tomuschat
and Chicago Professor David
Currie) was the man for that
profound task. No other native
speaker of English commanded
so much of the jurist's German.
No one living and laboring out-
side the cloistered community of
Deutsche Staatsrechtslehrer had
mastered so much German con-
stitutional theory, history, and
doctrine. And few legal scholars
so thoroughly embodied the
Basic Law's evocative commit-
ment to dignity.
Sadly, in late December 2018,
Professor Kommers passed away
at the age of eighty-six.
He leaves behind a loving
family, including his wife Nancy.
He also leaves behind a global
* J.B. Stombock Professor of Law, Washington & Lee University School of Law.
Coauthor, with Donald Kommers, of the third edition of the treatise The Constitutional
Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany (Duke University Press, 2012). An
original version of this essay appeared as Russell Miller, German Constitutional Law's
Irreplaceable Ambassador to the World, FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE EINSPRUCH MAGAZIN
(Jan. 15, 2019), https://einspruch.faz.net//einspruch-magazin/2019-01-16/a54cb2674c3
3c0f~b5882e1f416ec910?GEPC=s5.
© The Author(s) [2019]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American
Society of Comparative Law. All rights reserved. For permissions, please i
e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/amcomp67&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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