Daniel Thürer (born 6 June 1945 inSt. Gallen) is a Swiss jurist and professor emeritus of international, comparative constitutional, and European law at theUniversity of Zurich. He is a member of theInternational Committee of the Red Cross, and of theInstitut de Droit International, and presides the German International Law Association. Currently, he is a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at theEuropean University Institute inFlorence.

Thürer graduated from the Law Faculty of theUniversity of Zurich in 1970. Subsequently, he obtained an LL.M. at theUniversity of Cambridge, and completed his PhD thesis onself-determination in 1974. After conducting post-doctoral research at the University of Zurich (with Prof. Dietrich Schindler jun.), as a fellow at theMax Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, and theHarvard Law School, he was the Legal Adviser to the Government of the Canton ofAargau. In 1985, he was appointed to the Chair of International, European and Constitutional Law at the University of Zurich, which he held until 2010, and whose previous occupants includeMax Huber and Dietrich Schindler sen. and jun. He was also director of the university's Institute of Public International Law.

Professor Thürer has been teaching regularly at other universities as well. He was a Visiting Research Professor at theStanford Law School, a Distinguished Visiting Professor at theUniversity of Hong Kong, a member of the Advisory Board of the Concord Center, School of Law in Jerusalem, a Visiting Research Professor at the Harvard Law School, a Consultant and Honorary Professor at theGujarat National Law University, a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge (Herbert Smith Visiting Programme), a visiting professor at theInstitute of Higher International Studies,Panthéon-Assas University and at the Institut des droits de l'homme in Strasbourg.

In addition to his teaching activities, Professor Thürer has been an expert for and member of numerous international institutions. In 1991, he was elected to the Assembly, the supreme governing body of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In this capacity, he participated in missions to Zimbabwe, Zambia, Russia, Belarus, Poland, East Timor, India, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines and New Zealand. As CSCE/Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe expert (human rights dimension), he visited theBaltic States, Czechia and Slovakia,Moldavia andUkraine. Since 2004, he has been a Member of the Council of theEuropean Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)). He was a member of the Constitutional Court of Liechtenstein from 1989 to 2000.From 1993 to 1998, Professor Thürer was a member of the expert commission on the revision of theSwiss Federal Constitution. From 2000 to 2001, he was also a member of the so-calledBergier Commission, which re-considered Swiss policies during theSecond World War.

In 2007 Daniel Thürer was an initiator and Vice-President of theConvivenza Foundation - International Center for Minorities. In 2020 he was appointed as Honorary President of the Foundation.

Daniel Thürer is noted for an originalhumanist approach tointernational law that eschews simplisticrealism as well as thepositivism still prevalent in international legal scholarship.^[1] His multi-layered approach is best illustrated by the 2008 lecture onInternational Humanitarian Law at theHague Academy,^[2] where this highly technical body of law is, through an inter-disciplinary methodology incorporating religion, history and moral philosophy, re-interpreted to honour its original purpose of reducing human suffering and protecting civilians.

While he maintains a strong idealist belief in the transformative power of international law, his scholarship also advocates a bottom-up approach relying on successful local or regional institutions and traditions.^[3] More recently, he has focussed on applying the traditional concept of theres publica to modern constitutional law.^[4]

• Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Völker – Mit einem Exkurs zur Jurafrage (PhD Thesis, 1974)
• Perspektive Schweiz. Schulthess, Zürich 1998
• Bund und Gemeinden – Eine rechtsvergleichende Untersuchung (Beiträge des Max-Planck-Instituts zum ausländischen öffentlichen Recht und Völkerrecht, Band 90), Berlin 1986
• Verfassungsrecht der Schweiz – Droit constitutionnel suisse. Schulthess, Zürich 2001 (herausgegeben mit Jean-François Aubert undJörg Paul Müller)
• Kosmopolitisches Staatsrecht. Schulthess, Zürich 2005 (Grundidee Gerechtigkeit, Band 1)
• Völkerrecht als Fortschritt und Chance. Dike/Nomos, Zürich/Baden-Baden 2009 (Grundidee Gerechtigkeit, Band 2)
• Thomas Buergenthal and Daniel Thürer: Menschenrechte. Ideale, Instrumente, Institutionen. Dike, Zürich / St. Gallen, und Nomos, Baden-Baden 2010. 453 p.
• International Humanitarian Law: Theory and Practice (The Pocket Books of the Hague Academy of International Law), Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden, forthcoming 2010,ISBN 978-90-04-17910-3.
• Thürer, D. and Blindenbacher, R.: Embracing Differences - A Commitment for Minorities and Managing Diversity. Jubilee Edition of the Convivenza Book Series Volume 5. Schulthess Verlag, Zürich 2018.

• Institute for Public International and Foreign Constitutional Law, University of Zurich
• ICRC
• ECRI
• Institut de Droit International
• Deutsche Gesellschaft für Völkerrecht
• Fernand Braudel Fellowship at the EUI
• Convivenza Foundation