Wolfgang Kaleck founded the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights with other internationally renowned lawyers in Berlin in 2007. Kaleck has served as the organization’s general secretary since its foundation.
Kaleck previously worked as a criminal law attorney at the Hummel.Kaleck.Rechtsanwälte law firm, which he co-founded in 1991. Since 1998, he has been involved in the Koalition gegen Straflosigkeit (Coalition against Impunity), which fights to hold Argentinian military officials accountable for the murder and disappearance of German citizens during the Argentine dictatorship. Between 2004 and 2008, he worked with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights to pursue criminal proceedings against members of the US military, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Kaleck is a board member of the Mexican non-governmental organization ProDESC, FIAN Germany and the Child Rights Project. He is also a member of the International Hrant Dink Award Jury 2024-2025 and the Board of Trustees of the Paul Grueninger Foundation. In addition to his work as a lawyer, Kaleck also works as a publicist. His publications include Law versus Power: Our Global Fight for Human Rights and Concrete Utopia: Looking Back into the Future of Human Rights.
In 2020, Kaleck was Scholar-in-Residence at the Sorensen Center for International Peace and Justice at the CUNY School of Law in New York City. There, he led a series of human rights talks about transnational human rights litigation, social movements, business and human rights, and more.
For his work as lawyer and founder of ECCHR, Kaleck has been honored with multiple awards:
- 2014: Hermann Kesten Award from the PEN Zentrum Deutschland
- 2016: Hans Litten Prize from the Vereinigung Demokratischer Juristinnen und Juristen, together with Miriam Saage-Maaß
- 2017: honorary prize for human rights service fromthe Bruno Kreisky Stiftung
- 2018: Max Friedlaender Prize from the Bayerischer Anwaltverband
- 2019: Bassiouni Justice Award from the Centre for International Law Research and Policy