Nolte was born in
Bonn to the prominent historian and philosopher
Ernst Nolte and Annedore Mortier. He studied law, international relations and philosophy at the
Free University of Berlin and the
University of Geneva from 1977 to 1983. From 1984 to 1990, he was a junior fellow at the
Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, and earned his doctorate in law at
Heidelberg University in 1991 with the dissertation
Defamation Law in Democratic States, a comparative analysis of Germany, the United States and the jurisprudence of the
European Convention on Human Rights. After holding visiting fellowships at
Leipzig University and
New York University School of Law from 1990 to 1992, he was a senior fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law from 1992 to 1999, and earned his
habilitation in 1998 with the book
Intervention upon Invitation on the use of force by foreign troops in internal conflicts. Between 1999 and 2004, he held the chair of public international law at the
University of Göttingen, and was Dean of the Faculty of Law in 2004. From 2004 to 2008, he held the chair in public international law at
LMU Munich, in succession to
Bruno Simma. In 2008, he succeeded
Christian Tomuschat as holder of the chair of public international law at the
Humboldt University of Berlin. He is also head of the Center for Global Constitutionalism at the
WZB Berlin Social Science Center. In 2000, he was commissioned by the
Ministry of Defence to lead a study comparing European systems of
military law, against the backdrop of the European Union's efforts to create the
Common Security and Defence Policy; the study resulted in the book
European Military Law Systems (2003; also published in German in 2002). Nolte wrote in the foreword that the prospect of establishing
European armed forces required a better understanding of the national military legal systems of the member states. Since the turn of the century, he has been a visiting fellow at
All Souls College, Oxford from 2003 to 2004, a visiting professor at the
Panthéon-Assas University in 2004 and a visiting fellow at
Princeton University's Law and Public Affairs Program from 2013 to 2014. From 2000 to 2007, he was a member of the
Council of Europe's European Commission for Democracy through Law, the
Venice Commission. He has been a member of the German Foreign Office's advisory council on public international law since 2006. Within the ILC, he founded and chairs the study group on "Treaties over Time." In 2017 he was elected chairperson of the ILC. He was President of the German Society of International Law from 2013 to 2017. He was elected as a member of the
Institut de Droit International in 2019.
Judge of the International Court of Justice On 12 November 2020, Nolte was
elected Judge of the
International Court of Justice, with 160 out of 193 votes cast in the
United Nations General Assembly and 14 out of 15 votes cast in the
Security Council. He started his nine-year term on 6 February 2021. Foreign Minister
Heiko Maas said Nolte is "one of the world's most renowned international legal scholars." ==Selected works==