For students, activists, and scholars typing “autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd” into search bars late at night, the answer awaits in her formidable corpus: begin with Autocratic Legalism (2018), then read The Rule of Law and the Eurocrisis (2015), then the Hungary and Poland chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law. But also read the dissents—the judges fired in Budapest, the professors investigated in Warsaw, the civil servants purged in Ankara. Their stories are the data points. Scheppele gave us the regression line.
According to Scheppele, autocratic legalists are masters of "constitutional hardball." They rely on their parliamentary majorities to pass legislation that looks procedurally correct but is substantively anti-democratic. By the time the public realizes what has happened, the legal landscape has been reshaped to ensure the incumbent can never lose power. The Pillars of the Strategy
Kim Lane Scheppele 's foundational text on Autocratic Legalism was published in the University of Chicago Law Review The University of Chicago Law Review Core Thesis of the Text Scheppele defines autocratic legalism
For readers encountering the search term “autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd” (likely a typographical shorthand for “UPenn” or “UPenn Law”), it is worth untangling the institutional threads.
At its core, autocratic legalism describes a process where democratically elected leaders use their electoral mandates to dismantle the very democratic institutions that put them in power. Unlike traditional dictators, these leaders don’t break the law; they use the law to break the system.
Leaders win power through relatively fair elections, then claim a popular mandate to make sweeping changes that eventually eliminate the possibility of a peaceful rotation of power.
While she moved to Princeton’s Department of Sociology in 2005 (with affiliations to the Woodrow Wilson School and the Program in Law and Public Policy), her voice remains prominent in Penn circles. She has been a frequent speaker at the at Penn, and many of her key post-2010 articles were developed during sabbaticals and workshops in Philadelphia. The association is so strong that even the University of Chicago Law Review symposium on autocratic legalism included UPenn scholars as commentators, reinforcing the mental link.
How do you think should respond when a country remains "legal" on paper but undemocratic in practice?
For students, activists, and scholars typing “autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd” into search bars late at night, the answer awaits in her formidable corpus: begin with Autocratic Legalism (2018), then read The Rule of Law and the Eurocrisis (2015), then the Hungary and Poland chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law. But also read the dissents—the judges fired in Budapest, the professors investigated in Warsaw, the civil servants purged in Ankara. Their stories are the data points. Scheppele gave us the regression line.
According to Scheppele, autocratic legalists are masters of "constitutional hardball." They rely on their parliamentary majorities to pass legislation that looks procedurally correct but is substantively anti-democratic. By the time the public realizes what has happened, the legal landscape has been reshaped to ensure the incumbent can never lose power. The Pillars of the Strategy
Kim Lane Scheppele 's foundational text on Autocratic Legalism was published in the University of Chicago Law Review The University of Chicago Law Review Core Thesis of the Text Scheppele defines autocratic legalism autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd
For readers encountering the search term “autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd” (likely a typographical shorthand for “UPenn” or “UPenn Law”), it is worth untangling the institutional threads.
At its core, autocratic legalism describes a process where democratically elected leaders use their electoral mandates to dismantle the very democratic institutions that put them in power. Unlike traditional dictators, these leaders don’t break the law; they use the law to break the system. Scheppele gave us the regression line
Leaders win power through relatively fair elections, then claim a popular mandate to make sweeping changes that eventually eliminate the possibility of a peaceful rotation of power.
While she moved to Princeton’s Department of Sociology in 2005 (with affiliations to the Woodrow Wilson School and the Program in Law and Public Policy), her voice remains prominent in Penn circles. She has been a frequent speaker at the at Penn, and many of her key post-2010 articles were developed during sabbaticals and workshops in Philadelphia. The association is so strong that even the University of Chicago Law Review symposium on autocratic legalism included UPenn scholars as commentators, reinforcing the mental link. The Pillars of the Strategy Kim Lane Scheppele
How do you think should respond when a country remains "legal" on paper but undemocratic in practice?
