"Achtung!"

The German Defense Minister has been accused of plagiarism in his dissertation for a PhD. in law. As a legal editor with close to 30 years' experience, I've come across texts that could qualify as, at least, borderline plagiarism. In reading them, especially when one knows the author, one often gets the sense that a particular passage is written in a different style, with a different vocabulary, elements that are not wholly compatible with the rest of the work and the author's intellectual capacity and output. I've read quite a few theses and other scholarly works that reek of plagiarism.

So, if it turns out to be true, Herr Guttenberg joins the swelling ranks of the intellectually dishonest.

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