Autocratic Legalism Kim Lane Scheppele Upd

Altering judicial appointment procedures to guarantee party loyalists fill vacancies.

Before packing the court, autocrats often increase the number of seats or change appointment rules, ensuring the judiciary cannot stop their legislative agenda (a tactic used in Hungary and Turkey).

They argue that because they were elected by "the people," any institution that opposes them (like a Supreme Court) is "anti-democratic." The "Blueprint" of Democratic Decay autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd

Autocrats in countries like Hungary (Viktor Orbán) and Turkey actively borrow legal tactics from one another, such as packing constitutional courts to validate executive overreach.

The rise of autocratic legalism poses significant threats to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Some of the dangers include: The rise of autocratic legalism poses significant threats

: Leaders maintain the "outer appearance" of democracy (like holding elections) while hollowing out its liberal content, making it difficult for international observers to categorize the regime as an autocracy early on. The University of Chicago Law Review 2. The Autocratic Script: 10 Steps

As noted above, Hungary's grant of political asylum to Zbigniew Ziobro represents a new frontier in autocratic legalist tactics—the use of asylum law to create a transnational shield for allied illiberal actors. A Verfassungsblog analysis called this "legalism deployed not to protect rights, but to shield power and dismantle mutual trust from within". The Autocratic Script: 10 Steps As noted above,

is a highly sophisticated strategy where democratically elected leaders use their electoral mandates and the precise mechanisms of constitutional law to systematically dismantle liberal democratic governance. Rather than seizing power through traditional military coups or violent overthrows, modern illiberal leaders deploy teams of lawyers, constitutional amendments, and sweeping legislative reforms to hollow out democratic checks and balances from within. Coined in its modern political framework by political scientist Javier Corrales and famously expanded upon by Princeton University sociologist Kim Lane Scheppele in her seminal 2018 University of Chicago Law Review essay, the concept exposes how the very tools designed to protect a constitutional order can be weaponized to destroy it. The Genesis of a Paradox: Law as a Weapon

Second, Critics from the Global South note that many post-colonial nations have always used legal forms to maintain oligarchic control—South Africa under apartheid, for example. Is autocratic legalism new, or simply a rebranding of “managed democracy”? Scheppele concedes the point in recent work, acknowledging that the Hungarian model borrows from earlier “electoral authoritarian” regimes in Russia and Singapore. However, she insists the term retains analytic value because it captures the performative hypocrisy of claiming liberal legality while destroying it—a hypocrisy that previous authoritarian legal forms did not bother to maintain.

(early articulation) or Scheppele, Kim Lane, and Laurent Pech. (2018). "Illiberalism Within: Rule of Law Backsliding in the EU." Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies , Vol. 20, pp. 3–47.