Mentor Group Advisory Board
University of Tübingen Law Faculty
Mentor Group Founding and Purposes
Established in 1983 in Boston, Mentor Group is a non-profit 501(c)(3) research institute that founded a distinctive constitutional, legal-economic and political-economic exchange following the classical definition of political economy that applies the principles of justice to economic and business affairs. Unique among public service organizations, we entered the 21st Century bringing together cross-Atlantic viewpoints and collaborative conversations with a peer group of Supreme Court Justices and senior Judges, legislators, EU Commissioners, scholars and industry leaders in the European Union and the United States.
Mentor Group began this exchange in its inaugural Symposium collaborating with the Woodrow Wilson Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Warren Burger presided over this Symposium in 1985 where the principal address was given by The Honourable Lord Cameron, KT (Lord of Session and President of The Royal Society of Edinburgh), who related Scottish political economy from the Enlightenment to the founding of the United States of America. US Appeals Court for the DC Circuit Judge Robert Bork responded to Lord Cameron. Mentor Group then helped prepare the overseas contributions to the United States Constitution Bicentennial Symposium of the Smithsonian Institution in May 1987.
In 1988, these comparative constitutional studies took on a specific “Supreme Court” aspect when Mentor invited Lord Mackenzie-Stuart, then President of the European Court of Justice, to Washington to discuss the evolution of European Community law and his Court in comparison with US Supreme Court historical development and the influence of Chief Justice John Marshall. Chief Justice Burger presided at this Wilson Center Symposium. Senator Charles Mathias and Ambassador Elliot Richardson responded to Lord Mackenzie-Stuart.
Mentor Group’s next Symposium took place at the National Archives in Washington, DC and studied the achievement of the Grundgesetz (Constitution) of the Federal Republic of Germany on its fortieth anniversary in 1989. This Symposium explored the interdependence of the German Constitutional Court with the political and economic strength of the Federal Republic itself. These studies probed how the Grundrechte (basic rights) of the Federal Republic provided a source for the economic vitality of Germany and for its political capacity adapting to inevitable constitutional change imposed by the collapse of the Berlin Wall several months later in November 1989.
In 1989, Mentor Group prepared a Symposium in honor of the Franco-American Judicial Exchange, which began at the National Archives in Washington, DC. Members of the Supreme Court of the United States and the French Conseil d’État led this exchange. In the same year, Mentor Group founded the Forum for Members of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Court of Justice of the European Communities, which convened at The Royal Society of Edinburgh in August 1991. During 1990, Mentor Group received a MacArthur Foundation presidential grant for the Forum.
Following the federalization of Russia and the expansion of the Constitutional Court’s authority, as mandated by the constitutional order ratified by the Russian people in December 1993, Mentor Group initiated exchanges between members of the Russian Constitutional Court, Parliament and other government officials, and their counterparts in the United States and Europe. Adapting universal principles to the Russian reality, the Troika for Russian Legal-Economic Affairs examined the possibility and demand for the rule of law in Russia’s modern economy, spanning the course of a decade.
Mentor Group’s work was primarily motivated by lack of understanding in the United States about the European Union and by misapprehension in Europe about the origins of the United States political economy. From these experiences emerged our enduring commitment to fostering informed dialogue and scholarship, believing that stronger transatlantic cooperation begins with a deeper appreciation of one another’s legal, political, and economic traditions.
Current Affairs and Legacy
Forum for EU-US Legal-Economic Affairs
Symposium on Statecraft
Founded in 2009, the Symposium on Statecraft meets annually in Washington, DC to unite EU and US Supreme Court members with esteemed counterpart diplomats, scholars and military leaders. Exploring the principles of the rule of law, members assist their peers building statecraft yielding truly global security. In addition, this Symposium holds that statecraft must also deliver and maintain free and open markets with constitutional protection of all market players.
Historical Activities
Seminar for the European Union Judiciaries
Beginning in 2005, the Seminar was the first to convene EU national court judges with European Court of Justice (ECJ) and United States Supreme Court members. It largely attracted EU national judges, who must apply EU law as consistent with their own Constitution. All member state judges grapple with cases whose judgments are increasingly at variance with one another and with ECJ case-law itself. This resembles United States federal court “circuit splits,” ultimately resolved by the United States Supreme Court, for which there is no analogous procedure in Europe.
Intellectual Property Seminar
The Intellectual Property Seminar convenes upon request of members of the Forum for EU-US Legal-Economic Affairs addressing judicial oversight of regulators. This comprehends European unitary patents and the new European intellectual property courts. Such exchanges inform intellectual property policy and related issues in the European Union such as competition and innovation, e-commerce policy and inherent copyright protections, among others.
Case-law Compendium on Economic Freedom and Administrative Power
Harvard Seminar on Statecraft and Political Economy
Founded in 1990, this Seminar convened Harvard Law and Harvard Business School students with officials and jurists from both the EU and US jurisdictions. The seminars explored durabilities of the American political economy, a term defined by Adam Smith in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations as “the branch of the science of a statesman or legislator” concerned with the management system “providing a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people.” Referencing the political economy of any nation, Smith cites rule of law for its dynamic principles of justice. Smith declares justice intrinsic to economic and business affairs that actually generate the wealth of nations.
Troika for Russian Legal-Economic Affairs
The Chatham House Rule of non-attribution governs our activities.
