Guest researcher, Heidelberg

I have been invited by professor Peter-Christian Müller-Graff to spend a year at the Institut für deutsches und europäisches Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsrecht der Universität Heidelberg. I will stay at the institute from september 2012 to july 2013. T he year is a sabbatical from my present position as dean at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo. My four years as a dean have brought me away from my research in European law, and I need this time to catch up on the past years development both in the l egal and the academic fields. At the same time it will give me the chance to widen and deepen my contacts with German colleagues. The last few years I have been publishing in Norwegian on rhetoric, legal argumentation and legal theory. My specific projec t during the year will be to study European law in light of rhetorical theory. Germany is a good place to undertake this study as there is a strong tradition following the works of Chaim Perelman and Theodor Wieweg. I will also collaborate with the recent ly established network of legal linguistics which is based in Copenhagen.