is a highly calculated governance strategy where democratically elected leaders use their legal mandate and formal constitutional methods to systematically dismantle the checks, balances, and institutions of liberal democracies. Coined and popularized in constitutional sociology by Princeton University professor Kim Lane Scheppele , this concept describes a "constitutional coup" executed without violence or military intervention. Instead of violating the law, autocratic legalists weaponize it, using the literal text of the law to assassinate its democratic spirit.
: The goal is to ensure the ruling party can never lose power again. The Three Pillars of Autocratic Legalism
The experience of watching fragile democracies take root—only to watch them rot from the inside two decades later—shaped her intellectual trajectory. Since 2010, she has been documenting the rise of a new breed of leader: the "legalistic autocrat." Her upcoming book, Destroying (and Restoring) Democracy by Law , is forthcoming from Harvard University Press, and in recognition of her influence, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2024 for her work on democratic backsliding. autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd
Third, If autocratic legalism operates through legal forms, what legal remedy exists? Scheppele is sober. She has argued that international bodies like the EU cannot simply “enforce” democracy because the infringements are written into domestic constitutions. Instead, she advocates for what she calls militant democracy 2.0 —not banning parties, but requiring supermajorities for constitutional changes, protecting judicial independence with international treaty locks, and creating “right to democracy” actions before the European Court of Human Rights. Whether these cures can work against a determined government with control of parliament and the press remains, she admits, an open question.
Then came the 2010s. Observers watched in bewilderment as elected leaders in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and eventually the United States began dismantling democratic guardrails not with bayonets, but with briefs. They amended constitutions. They packed courts. They rewrote electoral laws. They declared emergencies and cited legal texts. To the casual eye, the machinery of law was still humming. But the destination had changed. : The goal is to ensure the ruling
Recent discussions emphasize parallels in the U.S., particularly regarding attempts to overturn elections through judicial means and the use of executive orders to bypass congressional authority.
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). Third, If autocratic legalism operates through legal forms,
Crucially, because law is the weapon of choice, "impending autocracy may not be evident at the start". This is what makes autocratic legalism so insidious: the decline is incremental, cloaked in a veneer of procedural legitimacy.