He was born on 25 1949 in Budapest. He graduated sub auspiciis in 1972 from the Faculty of Law and Public Administration of Eötvös Lóránd University (ELTE). In 1974 and in 1979 he completed the Académie de Droit Comparé in Strasbourg and in Coimbre. Since 1972 he has worked at the Institute of Public Administration and Law of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA), currently he is a research professor. From 1978 he taught at the Law Department of the University of Economics. He has been a part-time university professor at the Civil Law Department of ELTE since 1998. He is a founder of the Legal Programme of the Central European University. From 1990 he has taught one semester each year in the USA at the University of Chicago, the Cardozo Law School and the New York University Law School. At the end of 1995 he became a corresponding member and in 2001 a full member of MTA. He has been a member of the American Law Institute since 1997. His field of research is the sociology of law, the philosophy of law, the theory of civil law (economic analysis of law), comparative constitutional law and the issues of environmental protection law related to these fields. He is a founder of the League against the Death Penalty.