Konstanze von Schütz

Assistant Professor
(Special Category)

3644 Peel Street
Room 43, OCDH
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3A 1W9


konstanze.vonschuetz [at] mcgill.ca (Email)

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Biography

Konstanze von Schütz is an Assistant Professor at McGill University’s Faculty of Law.  

Her research and writing focus on private law and private law theory, particularly the law of property. Konstanze’s work seeks to account for the ways in which private law expresses and implements ideas about how people can relate to one another under its rules and institutions. In canvassing the rationales that underlie and animate private law concepts and ideas, she draws on insights from comparative law, legal history, as well as legal and political philosophy to illuminate the doctrine. 

Konstanze’s current research projects include a comparative study of “public property” in different jurisdictions, as well as an inquiry into the different dimensions of standardization in the law of property. Her dissertation, “Connecting Independent Owners”, puts forth a comprehensive theoretical account of lesser and limited property rights in the common law. 

Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in, among others, the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, the McGill Law Journal, the American Journal of Comparative Law, and has been included in edited collections. She has been invited to present and discuss her work (in English, French, and German) with audiences working in a range of different jurisdictions and methodological approaches to private law.  

Prior to joining McGill Law, Konstanze was a Visiting Researcher and recipient of the Helmut Coing scholarship at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory  in the fall of 2022. In 2021-22, she was the Private Law Fellow at Yale Law School’s Center for Private Law. Since 2022, she is co-chairing the Young Property Lawyers’ Forum (YPLF).   

Konstanze trained in Germany and Canada. She holds an LL.B. from Bucerius Law School (Hamburg, Germany), the two German “Staatsexamina” (State Examinations in Law), and an LL.M. from the University of Toronto. She practiced as Associate Lawyer in the areas of Intellectual Property and Litigation in Germany. As part of her training, she clerked at the Higher Regional Court of Appeal of Hamburg. 

Employment 

  • Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University, incoming 

  • Wainwright Junior Fellow, Faculty of Law, McGill University, 2023  

  • Visiting Researcher (Helmut Coing-Scholarship), Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt a.M. (Germany), 2022 

  • Private Law Fellow, Center for Private Law, Yale Law School, New Haven (US), 2021 - 2022 

  • Associate lawyer, CMS Hasche Sigle, Hamburg (Germany), 2014 - 2015   

  • Judicial clerkship, Higher Regional Court of Appeal, Hamburg (Germany), 2012 - 2014  

Education  

  • Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD), University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, exp 2023 

  • LL.M., University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, 2016 

  • Second State Examination in Law (~ Bar Exam), Hamburg (Germany), 2014 

  • First State Examination in Law, Hamburg (Germany), 2011 

  • LL.B., Bucerius Law School, Hamburg (Germany), 2010 

Areas of Interest 

Private Law, especially Property Law, Private Law Theory, Comparative Law, Legal Theory, Equity & Trust Law & Legal History.

Selected Publications 

“Benjamin N. Cardozo’s Equitable Method and Judicial Lawmaking’s Auxiliary Role” (forthcoming, Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities) 

"Keeping It Private: The Impossibility of Abandoning Ownership and the horror vacui of the Common Law of Property"(2022) 66:4 McGill Law Journal 721–758 

"From Local to Global on Multiple Pathways: A Review of Amnon Lehavi, Property Law in a Globalizing World" (2020) 68:3 American Journal of Comparative Law 695–700 

"Immanent Ratio Legis and Statutory Interpretation" in Verena Klappstein & Maciej Dybowski, eds, Ratio Legis - Philosophical and Theoretical Perspectives (Springer, 2018) 161–186 

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