Petra Butler

Butler has held visiting positions around the world, including the Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona- since 2013); Pritzker School of Law, Northwestern University (Chicago), Chinese University of Political Science and Law (Beijing); University of Montevideo; Bucerius Law School (Hamburg); Hamad bin Khalifa University (Doha), University of Adelaide. In 2004 she was the Holgate Fellow at Grey College, University of Durham and in 2008 she was a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She was a 2015 Scholar-in-Residence for prominent law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.

After a 1998 PhD titled 'Medical misadventure im neuseeländischen Accident Compensation Scheme : eine Antwort auf die Unzulänglichkeiten des tort law oder ein fehlgeschlagener Versuch?' at the University of Göttingen about New Zealand's Accident Compensation Corporation, Butler moved to the Victoria University of Wellington, rising to full professor.

She completed her LLM at Victoria University of Wellington in 1992 on a scholarship of the German Academic Exchange Service, studying inter alia environmental law under Sir Geoffrey Palmer. After completing her Referendariat at the Oberlandesgericht Braunschweig and as part of the Referendariat being a judge's clerk at the South African Constitutional Court for Justice Kate O'Regan in 1995/1996 she took a position as a researcher at the German Research Institute for Public Administration.

Butler grew up in Brunswick, where she attended the Gymnasium Ricarda-Huch-Schule graduating in 1985. Butler studied law at the Julius Maximillian University of Würzburg and the Georg August University of Göttingen where she was a researcher for Professor Dr Erwin Deutsch at the Chair of International Private and Comparative Law.