This month we caught up with one of our newest members, Bettina Rentsch, who graciously answered our questions about her work.

Bettina Rentsch

General Background:

Bettina is an Assistant Professor for European Private Law, Private International Law and Comparative Law at Freie Universität Berlin’s Department of Law. Her core areas of research are Private International, Comparative Law and the foundations of law. She teaches Private International Law and Comparative Law, as well as Tort Law and Consumer Law at Freie Universität.

Bettina holds a First State Exam in Law from the University of Freiburg and the State of Baden-Württemberg (high honours ’13), a Doctoral Degree in Law from the University of Heidelberg (s.c.l., ’16), a Master of Laws from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (LL.M., m.c.l. equivalent, ’16) and Bar Exam equivalent from the Higher Regional Court of Berlin (’19). Bettina’s doctoral thesis (Der gewöhnliche Aufenthalt im System des Europäischen Kollisionsrechts) was published in 2017. Bettina was a practicing lawyer at Hengeler Mueller’s Berlin office from 2019 to 2020. In 2020, she returned to the University of Heidelberg for a Postdoctoral Degree (Habilitation), before assuming a tenure track assistant professorship at Freie Universität Berlin in early 2022. She has been an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford’s Harris Manchester College for Michaelmas Term, 2023.

What are you passionate about?

Several things at a time, but anything with a cross-border aspect attracts my interest. I am constantly exploring the potential of Private International Legal thought on social theory and philosophy. I am involved in comparative and interdisciplinary projects in this field. Right now, I am working on a larger piece on Conflict of Laws in times of war. I do a lot of work on critical theories and their potential for legal thought. And, most importantly, I am passionate about the concept of social space, which also has a Conflict of Laws dimension.

What brings you to PLPR?

My postdoctoral thesis on the Private Law of Social Spaces. The project consists of two pillars. A first, doctrinal and comparative pillar, identifies a private legal framework for complex real-world phenomena like house and stadium bans. The analysis focuses on the German property regime, yet employs comparative references to the approaches taken by neighboring legal orders. A second pillar of the project focuses on the marginalizing potential of property in communities, drawing from accounts by critical geography and spatial social theories. Both approaches – the doctrinal and critical one – in their own right give reason to challenge the legitimacy of private property as a ground for private ordering in social spaces and call for a socially sensitive model of consent in German Property Law. I am confident that my project will highly benefit from the PLPR conferences and its informal meetings with colleagues.

Anecdote: things we don’t know about you? 

I am new to this association, so any introductory remark might be of help. My team and I run an Instagram profile where we share our work and office life (@rentsch.international). Besides checking our Instagram, I am a passionate cyclist and I love being anywhere around the sea, be it the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean. Needless to say that I love the mountainside, too – a passion I share with my partner, who, just like me, is an early career academic. Besides being outdoors, I adore the opera. Living right next to Deutsche Oper Berlin is one of the greatest aspects of my daily life.