Ernst Rabel

Ernst Rabel was an Austrian-born American scholar of Roman law, German private law, and comparative law, who, as the founding director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign and International Private Law, in Berlin, achieved international recognition in the period between the World Wars, before being forced into retirement under the Nazi regime, and emigrating to the United States, in 1939. In the field of comparative law his methodological perspectives, particularly as articulated and disseminated by his students, including Ernst von Caemmerer, Gerhard Kegel, and Max Rheinstein, were influential in the development of the "functional" or "function/context" methodology that became standard in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere in the world, in the post-World War II era. His work in Germany in the 1930s in the area of the law of the sale of goods provided a model for later postwar efforts to develop a uniform world-wide sales law.