Nine months before his election as constitutional judge, Stephan Harbarth was awarded an honorary professorship by the University of Heidelberg. Now the law does not prescribe a specific title or a minimum number of publications for eligibility to be elected as a constitutional judge. However, his critics suspect that the honorary professorship was intended to pave the way for him to Karlsruhe and to dispel doubts about his professional suitability.
Harbarth’s former law firm “SZA” maintains close ties to the University of Heidelberg. For example, she set up a foundation together with her. During Harbarth’s appointment process, the university obtained two written reports from external professors at the beginning of 2017. If the names circulating are correct, these people would also have ties to “SZA.” So was everything going well here or were “courtesy reports” even drawn up?