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The Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law conducts comparative legal research on foreign, European and international private, commercial, company and procedural law. Its work covers private international and procedural law, company and capital markets law, person and family law, and the theoretical and social-science foundations of law. It publishes academic work and issues recommendations and expert opinions for commissions, governments and courts, and its researchers take part in preparing laws at national and international level.

The institute's customers are primarily legislators, governments, commissions and courts, as well as academic researchers, and it is funded as part of the Max Planck Society. It runs a specialist library of 550,000 media units on foreign and international private law, with literature from more than 200 countries. It also runs a doctoral and postdoctoral programme and a scholarship programme for foreign researchers.

The institute was founded in Berlin in 1926 with the participation of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, with Ernst Rabel as its first director. It was integrated into the Max Planck Society in 1949 and has been based in Hamburg since 1956. Its current directorate consists of Holger Fleischer, Ralf Michaels and Anne Röthel. The institute employs about 140 people in full-time and part-time roles, and it advertises academic and non-academic positions through its external application portal.

Product: Comparative legal research, publications, expert opinions and recommendations, and a specialist library on foreign and international private law.