Prof Dr Sophie Schönberger

Prof Dr Sophie Schönberger studied law in Berlin, Rome and Paris. She received her doctorate from the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2006. After completing her legal clerkship in Berlin, Venice and Paris, she worked as a temporary academic counsellor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She completed her habilitation there in 2012 with a thesis entitled „Öffentliches Kulturrecht. Tangible and intangible cultural works between protection, promotion and value creation“. In the same year, she was appointed to the Chair of Constitutional and Administrative Law, Media Law, Art and Cultural Law at the University of Konstanz. In the academic year 2017/18 she was a Fellow at the Konstanz Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities, and in the winter semester 2021/22 she was a Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities „Law as Culture“.

From 2018 to 2025, she held the Chair of Public Law, Art and Cultural Law at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and was Co-Director of the Institute for German and International Party Law and Party Research (PRUF).

Since 1 August 2025, she has held the professorship for Public Law, in particular Constitutional Law and Constitutional Theory at the Free University of Berlin and heads the Berlin Centre for Political Parties and Parliamentary Law (BZPP).

Selected publications:

Party law. ParteienG, BWahlG, StiftFinG, Handkommentar, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2nd ed. 2026.

Politische Skandale und politische Macht, Nomos, 2024, (edited together with Thoma Poguntke).

The Reich Citizens. Ermächtigungsversuche einer gespenstischen Bewegung, C.H. Beck, 2023 (together with Christoph Schönberger).

The Imposition of Democracy. An essay, C.H. Beck, 2023.

Strengthening legal frameworks for political parties. Political party, parliamentary and election law development in Mongolia, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand and Venezuela, Schriften der Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung, 2022 (edited together with Heike Merten).