Simon studied law at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Padua, specializing in contemporary history of law and legal theory. In March 2022 he graduated with the First State Exam in Law. From September 2023 to July 2024 he studied for a Magister Juris (Mjur) at the University of Oxford, during which he was supported by scholarships from the DAAD and the University of Oxford Law Faculty. He was awarded the Herbert Hart Prize in Jurisprudence and Political Theory and the Law Faculty Prize for the Best Performance in the MJur. Since October 2024 he has been a research assistant at the Humboldt University of Berlin and a doctoral student in the Graduiertenkolleg “Normativity - Critique - Change”, supervised by Prof. Dr. Christoph Möllers.

The Body of the Constitution: Ontologies of the body in the jurisprudence of the German Federal Constitutional Court

In its decisions regarding the legal regulation of the human body, the German Federal Constitutional Court relies on certain background assumptions about the ontology of the body which are usually not made explicit. In the first part of the project, these assumptions will be explored through an analysis of the Court’s case law. The project draws upon feminist perspectives on law and philosophical theories of the ontology of the body to reveal how the court implicitly conceptualizes the body and its relationship to the person. Regarding this question, the working hypothesis is that the court views the human person as fundamentally separate from their body. In the project’s second part, the Court’s case law will then be exposed to critique on the basis of both internal and external standards.

Research Interests:

Constitutional law and theory, legal philosophy/jurisprudence, legal history