Josef Isensee, born in Hildesheim in 1937, studied law and philosophy in Freiburg, Vienna and Munich. Having completed his legal clerkship and having passed both the first and second legal examination in Munich, he was a research assistant at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He earned his PhD in constitutional and administrative law as well as in fiscal law in 1967 and qualified as a professor in 1970. In 1971 he was appointed full professor for state and administrative law at Saarland University. From 1975 to 2002 Isensee taught public law at the University of Bonn. After his retirement he held visiting positions at the universities of Jena, Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and the Freie Universität Berlin. He has been a full member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 1986.
