Germany’s Founding Pillars at 60: Future Challenges and Choices

Clemens Wergin

Die Welt

Clemens Wergin is the Washington Bureau Chief of Die Welt.

Russell A. Miller

Washington and Lee School of Law

Russell Miller teaches and researches in the fields of constitutional law, international law, comparative law theory and methods, and German law and legal culture. He is the author or editor of several books on international law, constitutional law, comparative law theory and methods, and German law and legal culture, including: Constitutional Places – Landmarks on the Road to German Democracy (Kunth 2025); An Introduction to German Law and Legal Culture (CUP 2024); Privacy and Power: A Transatlantic Dialogue in the Shadow of the NSA-Affair (CUP 2017); The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany (Duke 2012); Progress in International Law (Brill 2008); and Transboundary Harm in International Law: Lessons from the Trail Smelter Arbitration (CUP 2006). His articles and commentary have appeared in respected journals and in the international media. Miller is a two-time Fulbright Senior Research Fellow. In 2021 he was awarded a Humboldt Research Prize in recognition of his research on German law and his contributions to transatlantic understanding. Miller is the co-founder of the German Law Journal and the Berlin-based Rule of Law Academy. From 2020-2022, Miller served as the head of the Max Planck Law Network, a consortium of ten world-class research institutes involving more than twenty research directors and more than 400 PhD candidates, post-doctoral reserachers, and guest researchers. He has been a regular visiting fellow at universities and research institutes in Germany, including the Max Planck Institute for Public International Law (Heidelberg), the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the University of Münster, and the University of Freiburg. He served as a law clerk at the German Federal Constitutional Court and for Judge Robert H. Whaley of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington. Miller has degrees from Washington State University (BA 1991), Duke University (MA and JD 1994) and the University of Frankfurt (2002). He was a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow in 2015.

Stormy-Annika Mildner

Executive Director, The Aspen Institute Germany

Stormy-Annika Mildner is the executive director at the Aspen Institute Germany and a Geoeconomics Non-Resident Senior Fellow at AICGS. She was Sherpa of the Business 20 (B20), the official Engagement Partner of the German G20 Presidency and Head of the External Economic Policy Department at the Federation of German Industries (BDI).

German-American Issues 10

This German-American Issues edition, “Germany’s Founding Pillars at 60: Future Challenges and Choices” (#10), examines the dimensions of the three pillars on which the Federal Republic was founded: The future of the social market economy; the German Basic Law’s influence on the German military; and German-American relations from an eastern and western German perspective. This volume includes essays from Dr. Stormy-Annika Mildner and Mark Prentice, Dr. Russell A. Miller, Clemens Wergin, and Dr. Torsten Wöhlert.


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