Inside the house of legislation.
Eleven years in the Federal Ministry of Justice before becoming its minister: as desk officer, deputy head of the minister’s office, head of division and State Secretary.
Simplified and illustrative; the ministry’s organisation chart has changed over time. Positions held by Hubig are highlighted.
Tenancy law and the minister’s office
Hubig joined the Federal Ministry of Justice in Berlin in 2000. According to the ministry, she worked as a desk officer for tenancy law and as deputy head of the minister’s office, serving Federal Ministers Herta Däubler-Gmelin and Brigitte Zypries.
Desk officers (Referentinnen und Referenten) are where federal law is drafted: they prepare the first versions of bills, consult other ministries, the Länder and associations, and answer to the division head. The minister’s office (Leitungsstab) is the political nerve centre: it prepares the minister’s appointments, speeches and decisions and links the political leadership with the departments.
Cabinet and parliamentary affairs
From 2005 to 2008 Hubig headed the division for cabinet and parliamentary affairs, basic questions of the legislative programme, planning and coordination. In a ministry whose main product is legislation, this unit keeps the overview: it plans which bills will reach the cabinet when, coordinates the ministry’s positions for cabinet meetings, and follows bills through the Bundestag and Bundesrat.
Why this role matters
The Federal Ministry of Justice also performs a cross-government function: it checks the legal form and constitutionality of draft laws from all federal ministries (the “Rechtsprüfung”). A division that coordinates the legislative programme therefore sees the whole machinery of federal law-making — a perspective that is rare even within the civil service.
State Secretary
After six years in Rhineland-Palatinate, Hubig returned to Berlin following the 2013 federal election as State Secretary in the renamed Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection under Heiko Maas. Official sources date the post to 2014–2016.
German federal ministries have two kinds of state secretaries. Parliamentary State Secretaries are Members of the Bundestag who support the minister politically. Civil-service State Secretaries (beamtete Staatssekretäre) are the highest officials and lead the administration. Hubig held the latter post as Amtschefin, responsible for justice, legal policy and administration.
In 2016 she left the ministry to become Minister of Education in Rhineland-Palatinate — her first political office.
From practitioner to policy official
The move from courtroom to ministry changes the question a jurist asks. A judge asks how the law applies to a case; a ministry official asks what the law should be, how it will be applied in thousands of cases, and how it can be passed by parliament. Hubig’s years in Berlin combined both perspectives: drafting at desk-officer level, political steering in the minister’s office and the planning view of the legislative programme.
When she returned as minister in 2025, she took charge of a house she had known at three different levels of its hierarchy.
The minister’s office todaySources
- Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, biography of the Minister — bmjv.de
- Federal Government, curriculum vitae of Dr. Stefanie Hubig — bundesregierung.de
- Joint Rules of Procedure of the Federal Ministries (GGO), on legal examination of draft laws — bmi.bund.de