Alexander Somek is Professor of Law at the University of Iowa.

From October 2007 to July, 2008 he was a fellow in the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institut for Advanced Study Berlin)

In November 2006 he has been appointed to the Charles E. Floete Chair in Law.

His major areas of research are European Union Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, Public International Law and Jurisprudence.

Throughout his work is manifest the “post-positivist” approach to legal analysis that he developed in co-operation with Nikolaus Forgó when both were still at the University of Vienna.

This approach takes seriously the unique concern of continental legal positivism to remove from the study of law all unnecessary idealisations.

It is based on the understanding that, at a certain point, legal positivism’s commitment to sobriety needs to be turned against positivism itself.