Expert rejects most plagiarism claims against Julia Hänni

Most of the plagiarism allegations against Julia Hänni, a candidate for the European Court of Human Rights, are unfounded, plagiarism expert Jochen Zenthöfer told SRF. The universities investigating her work have not yet completed their reviews.

An Austrian plagiarism researcher commissioned by CH Media, Stefan Weber, recently presented an assessment containing further allegations against Hänni. Weber classified 52 passages in her doctoral thesis as plagiarism fragments or citation errors.

Zenthöfer said not every textual similarity constituted plagiarism. In his view, there must be deception and an intention to present someone else’s work as one’s own. Similarities involving banal or generally known statements did not require a citation, he said.

If a passage had been taken from a secondary source rather than read in the original work, however, the secondary source had to be cited. It could not simply be omitted and attributed directly to the original author, he said.

Asked whether Hänni could lose her doctorate, Zenthöfer said he did not expect that to happen. Even if some passages contained errors, he said, there was insufficient evidence of an intention to deceive and the alleged problems were too minor in relation to the work’s overall academic contribution.

He contrasted the case with that of former German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, whose doctoral thesis contained pages copied word for word. Hänni’s work, by comparison, contained only a small number of sentences or formulations that had appeared elsewhere, he said. Revoking a doctorate over such minor errors could call 30 to 50 per cent of law dissertations into question.

Zenthöfer also said plagiarism allegations often emerged before elections or when someone was seeking public office. That timing could suggest an attempt to influence elections, he said, because the person affected had little opportunity to respond before the vote while institutional reviews took much longer.

Hänni, a member of The Centre party, has been a federal judge since 2019. She studied law at the University of Zurich, completed her doctorate at the University of St. Gallen and obtained her habilitation at the University of Lucerne. In April 2026, the Swiss Federal Council decided to propose her, among others, as a successor to Swiss European Court of Human Rights judge Andreas Zünd. The universities of St. Gallen and Lucerne are still investigating the allegations.