About the Research Network

On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the Federal Social Court, renowned social scientists and representatives of the social justice system take stock of social law and social policy research in the Federal Republic of Germany in a memorandum. They make it clear that research capacities and opportunities in this field are declining and even threatened; and this despite the fact that social law and social policy are of particular importance for social integration in (post-) modern societies.

A first indication of the decline is the low degree of anchoring of social law and social policy in the local research landscape, especially at universities. Only a few exceptions contradict this finding and contribute to the visibility of social law and social policy research. These include the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich, the Research Center for Social Law and Social Policy at the Faculty of Law at the University of Hamburg, and the SOCIUM Research Center Inequality and Social Policy (formerly the Center for Social Policy) at the University of Bremen. They address social law and social policy from different angles; social policy issues are considered from a jurisprudential and economic perspective, or an opening to other disciplines is pursued from the perspective of social law and with a view to social policy issues.

In view of the changes and the increasing challenges of the welfare state, and in view of the associated challenges for social law on the one hand and social law and social policy research on the other, interdisciplinarity plays an important role, albeit to different degrees and with different focuses.