Prof. Dr. Dr. Udo Di Fabio has served in the second Senat of the Federal Constitutional Court since 1999. He was born in 1954 in Walsum, in the area now known as Duisburg. While his primary job experience has been in academia, including professorships in Bonn, Münster, Trier, and Munich, his career began in public administration (as a mid-level administrative official in Dinslaken). He became a judge at the Social Court of Duisburg immediately after being admittted to the practise of law in 1985. He finished his doctorate of law at the University of Bonn two years later, with a dissertation on judicial relief in parliamentary investigations (Rechtsschutz im parlamentarischen Untersuchungsverfahren), and continued there until 1990 as a research assistant at the Institute for Public Law. He then returned to Duisburg for a doctorate in sociology, concentrating on discourse theory (dissertation: Offener Diskurs und geschlossene Systeme). Continuing his long-term commute, he moved back to Bonn, where he completed the coursework needed to become a full professor. Throughout the 1990s, he served as a professor at the universities of Münster (1993), Trier (1993), and Munich (1997), where he worked until his appointment to the Federal Constitutional Court.