Kim Lane Scheppele autocratic legalism as the process where democratically elected leaders use their electoral mandates to systematically dismantle the constitutional system through legal and constitutional means. Unlike 20th-century autocrats who relied on military coups, modern "legalistic autocrats" weaponize the law to consolidate power, hollowing out liberal democratic values while maintaining a "veneer of legality". Paper Outline: Autocratic Legalism I. Introduction Definition
: Define autocratic legalism as the use of constitutional and legal methods to implement an illiberal agenda.
: Contrast this with "traditional" authoritarianism (e.g., Hitler or Stalin) that relied on brute force or overt ideology. Thesis Statement
: Autocratic legalism is the most potent threat to modern democracy because it uses the tools of democracy (elections and law) to destroy democratic accountability from within. II. The "Frankenstate" Concept Borrowing Mechanisms
: Explain Scheppele’s term for states that take individual, legitimate legal provisions from various liberal democracies and combine them into a system that is toxic to democracy. Technical Obfuscation
: Note how undemocratic intent is often buried under technical legal codes, making it difficult for the public or international observers to recognize the danger early on. III. The Autocratic Playbook (Typical Script) Winning Power : Secure a free and fair election victory. Capturing Institutions
: Use the mandate to pack courts and capture the legislature. Neutralizing Checks
: Systematic removal of civil service protections and the substitution of independent positions with loyalists. Harnessing Media
: Transforming independent media into pro-government echo chambers through funding or "legal" harassment (e.g., libel suits). Entrenchment
: Changing election laws to ensure the leader never leaves office, effectively ending the rotation of power. IV. Case Studies & Updates (2024–2026) Autocratic Legalism - The University of Chicago Law Review
A highly recommended paper that comprehensively covers autocratic legalism by Kim Lane Scheppele is:
Scheppele, Kim Lane. (2018). "Autocratic Legalism." The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 85, No. 2, pp. 545–583.
This is the foundational, most-cited article where Scheppele fully develops the concept. It explains how illiberal regimes (using Hungary and Poland as primary cases) use the forms of law—constitutions, statutes, courts—to entrench power, dismantle checks and balances, and undermine democracy without formally abolishing the legal order.
For a shorter, more accessible overview, see:
Scheppele, Kim Lane. (2018). "The Party’s Thirst for Blood: Autocratic Legalism in Hungary and Poland." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 97, No. 2, pp. 112–122.
If you need a comparative or updated perspective (e.g., including Turkey or Venezuela), also useful is:
Scheppele, Kim Lane. (2013). "The Rule of Law and the Frankenstate: Why Governance Checklists Do Not Work." Governance, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 559–562. (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.
Would you like a summary of the core argument from the 2018 UChicago Law Review paper?
Autocratic legalism, a concept developed by Kim Lane Scheppele, describes how leaders dismantle democracy from within by using lawful, constitutional mechanisms to consolidate power. These regimes, often termed "Frankenstates," utilize captured courts, purged bureaucracies, and manipulated laws to maintain power, a strategy increasingly applied to global contexts, including recent developments in the U.S.. For more on this framework, read the article on
Autocratic Legalism: How Democracies Die by the Letter of the Law
In the classic 20th-century playbook, democracies died in darkness—usually via a sudden, violent military coup. Tanks rolled into the streets, the constitution was suspended, and a dictator took charge. But in the 21st century, the threat has evolved into something far more subtle and, perhaps, more dangerous.
Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has pioneered the study of this phenomenon, coining the term "Autocratic Legalism." What is Autocratic Legalism?
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.
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
Scheppele identifies several key tactics used by autocratic legalists, most notably in her extensive work on Viktor Orbán’s Hungary: 1. Capturing the Referees
The first step is rarely a crackdown on citizens; it is a crackdown on the courts. By expanding the size of supreme courts ("court-packing") or lowering the retirement age for judges, leaders can fill judicial seats with loyalists. When the government later passes unconstitutional laws, there is no independent body left to strike them down. 2. Eliminating Checks and Balances
Autocratic legalists use "reform" as a pretext to weaken independent agencies. This includes electoral commissions, central banks, and media regulators. These institutions are not abolished; they are simply staffed with "yes-men" who ensure that the government's actions are never questioned. 3. Subjugating the Media
Rather than outright censorship, these leaders use legal tools like libel laws, tax audits, or the consolidation of media ownership by government-friendly oligarchs. The result is a "media pluralism" that exists only on paper, while the actual narrative is strictly controlled. 4. Changing the Rules of the Game
Electoral laws are often redesigned to favor the incumbent. Gerrymandering, changes to campaign finance, and the introduction of complex voting rules make it nearly impossible for a fractured opposition to win, even if they hold a majority of the popular vote. Why It Works
The genius—and the horror—of autocratic legalism is that it is incredibly difficult for the international community to criticize. When the European Union or the UN attempts to intervene, the leader can point to a specific law, passed by a legitimate parliament, and claim they are simply exercising "national sovereignty."
Because the process is incremental, it lacks a "fire alarm" moment. Each individual law might seem minor or even reasonable in isolation. It is only when the cumulative effect is viewed as a whole that the collapse of democracy becomes apparent. The Global Spread autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd
While Scheppele’s primary case study is Hungary, the framework of autocratic legalism has been applied globally. From Poland’s judicial "reforms" to trends seen in Turkey, India, and even debates within the United States, the pattern is eerily consistent. It represents a shift from rule of law to rule by law. Conclusion
Kim Lane Scheppele’s work serves as a vital warning for the modern age. She reminds us that a constitution is only as strong as the people’s willingness to defend its spirit, not just its text. When law becomes a weapon for those in power rather than a shield for the powerless, democracy is already in its twilight.
To protect democratic stability, we must look beyond the "legality" of a leader's actions and scrutinize whether those actions preserve or perish the democratic soul of the nation.
How do you think international bodies should respond when a country remains "legal" on paper but undemocratic in practice?
Kim Lane Scheppele’s framework of autocratic legalism describes a modern method of democratic backsliding where leaders use constitutional and legal maneuvers to dismantle democracy from the inside.
Instead of traditional coups, autocratic legalists maintain the form of law while destroying its substance. Key Pillars of Autocratic Legalism
Democratic Facade: Leaders do not cancel elections; they skew the playing field through gerrymandering or media control so they cannot lose.
Constitutional Hardball: Governments use legal procedures to capture independent institutions—like supreme courts or electoral commissions—filling them with loyalists.
The "Rule by Law": Law is treated as a weapon for the executive rather than a check on power. Opponents are not jailed without cause; they are targeted with "legal" tax audits or defamation suits.
Sociological Analysis: As a legal sociologist, Scheppele highlights how these leaders often enjoy genuine popularity, using their mandates to claim that "the people" want them to override restrictive legal norms. Global Context
The term was first defined by Javier Corrales but has been significantly expanded by Kim Lane Scheppele to explain shifts in countries like Hungary and Poland. Her work warns that by the time a system looks like a clear autocracy, the legal pathways to fix it have often already been legally abolished.
Kim Lane Scheppele’s concept of autocratic legalism describes a process where democratically elected leaders use their electoral mandates to dismantle constitutional checks and balances through legal means. Unlike traditional coups that use tanks and violence, autocratic legalists use the law to kill democracy. Core Definition
Autocratic legalism occurs when a regime with a popular mandate uses its power to systematically undermine the institutions designed to limit that power.
Democratic Origin: Leaders are legitimately elected in relatively free and fair elections.
Legal Methodology: Changes are made through constitutional amendments, new legislation, or court packing.
Illiberal Intent: The goal is to ensure the ruling party can never lose power again. The Three Pillars of Autocratic Legalism
🚀 Executive AggrandizementLeaders expand the powers of the executive branch while weakening the legislature and the judiciary. This often involves "reforming" the civil service to replace neutral experts with party loyalists.
⚖️ The Judiciary as a WeaponInstead of abolishing courts, autocrats "pack" them with supporters. They may also create new chambers or change retirement ages to force out independent judges. Once captured, the courts provide a veneer of legality to unconstitutional acts.
🗳️ Hollowing Out ElectionsThe legal framework of elections is altered to favor the incumbent. This includes gerrymandering, changing campaign finance laws, or creating "media councils" that penalize independent reporting while subsidizing state-friendly outlets. Key Examples from Scheppele’s Research
Hungary (Viktor Orbán): Often cited as the "textbook" case. Since 2010, the Fidesz party has used its two-thirds majority to rewrite the Constitution, capture the constitutional court, and dominate the media landscape.
Poland (PiS Party): Historically, the Law and Justice party followed a similar playbook by targeting the independence of the Supreme Court and the National Council of the Judiciary.
Venezuela: Early stages under Hugo Chávez involved using referendums and legal maneuvers to bypass traditional legislative hurdles. Why It Is Difficult to Combat
The "Rule of Law" Paradox: Because every action is "legal" (authorized by a law or a court), it is difficult for international bodies like the EU to intervene without appearing to violate national sovereignty.
Public Support: Because the leader is popular, many citizens view the dismantling of institutions as "cleaning up" a corrupt or slow-moving "old system."
Slow Erosion: Democracy does not die overnight; it fades through a "death by a thousand cuts," making it hard to identify the exact moment the system becomes autocratic.
💡 The takeaway: Autocratic legalism is a "legal" war on the rule of law. It turns the tools of democracy against itself, making it one of the most significant threats to modern constitutionalism.
Kim Lane Scheppele’s theory fundamentally changed how political scientists view modern authoritarianism. It moved the focus from "broken laws" to "weaponized laws."
The warning of autocratic legalism is that the death of democracy often comes not with a bang, but with a statute. The most dangerous threat to a legal system is not lawlessness, but a legal system that has been engineered to serve power rather than constrain it.
Kim Lane Scheppele ’s theory of autocratic legalism describes a strategy where democratically elected leaders use legal and constitutional means to dismantle democratic institutions from within. Unlike 20th-century autocrats who relied on tanks and coups, modern "legalistic autocrats" use a team of lawyers and a parliamentary majority to rewrite the rules to favor their own permanence in power. Core Mechanism: The "Frankenstate"
Scheppele coined the term "Frankenstate" to describe how autocrats create a new legal system by stitching together individual constitutional provisions—often borrowed from respected liberal democracies—that, when combined, produce an illiberal outcome. Kim Lane Scheppele autocratic legalism as the process
The Facade of Legality: Because these laws are formally enacted through constitutional procedures, they possess a "cloak of legitimacy" that makes them difficult to challenge at home or abroad.
Borrowing the Playbook: Autocrats in countries like Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Venezuela have been observed "explicitly borrowing" strategies from one another. The 10-Step Autocratic Script
Scheppele outlines a typical sequence used to consolidate power under the cover of law: Autocratic Legalism | The University of Chicago Law Review
Title: The Evolution of Autocratic Legalism: Scheppele’s Framework in the 2026 Landscape
By J. Corrigan April 12, 2026
A decade ago, Princeton sociologist Kim Lane Scheppele coined a term that reshaped how political scientists diagnose democratic backsliding: “autocratic legalism.” As we move through 2026, her framework has proven not only prescient but essential for understanding how illiberal regimes—and increasingly, hybrid democracies—use the very tools of liberal governance to dismantle it from within.
What is Autocratic Legalism?
In her seminal works (notably “Autocratic Legalism,” University of Chicago Law Review, 2018), Scheppele described a paradox: authoritarians no longer need tanks or suspended constitutions. Instead, they weaponize law. They pass constitutional amendments, pack courts, rewrite electoral rules, and deploy anti-corruption agencies against rivals—all while maintaining a veneer of legality. The goal is not lawlessness, but legalized lawlessness: a system where the form of law remains, but its substance (checks and balances, rights, due process) evaporates.
The 2026 Update
Applying Scheppele’s lens today reveals three major developments:
The Digital Constitution: In 2025-2026, several regimes have embedded algorithmic governance into legal codes. Hungary’s “Sovereignty Protection Act” (updated 2025) and parts of India’s unified digital personal data law now use automated legal findings to disqualify opposition candidates or NGOs. Scheppele’s warning about “legal forms with authoritarian functions” now includes code as law.
Strategic Litigation as Coup: The past year saw two high-profile cases—in Slovakia and South Korea—where executive-aligned constitutional courts issued rulings that effectively suspended parliamentary elections indefinitely, citing “national stability.” This is classic autocratic legalism: using judicial review to freeze democracy, not protect it.
The EU’s Adaptive Response: In a 2026 working paper, Scheppele (now at Central European University’s Democracy Institute) notes that the EU’s rule-of-law conditionality mechanism has forced Poland’s new centrist government to reverse some judicial changes. However, she argues that the EU remains vulnerable because “autocratic legalism migrates”—tactics learned in Budapest and Warsaw are now appearing in smaller member states’ local government laws.
Why It Matters Now
As we approach mid-term elections in multiple democracies, Scheppele’s core insight is urgent: look not for broken laws, but for twisted ones. The erosion of liberal democracy rarely arrives with a declaration of martial law. It comes via legal briefs, procedural votes, and “reforms” to the judiciary. In 2026, the battle for democracy is being fought in administrative courts, ethics committees, and algorithmic auditing boards—exactly where Scheppele told us to look.
Further Reading: Kim Lane Scheppele, “Autocratic Legalism” (2018) and her 2026 EUI working paper, “The New Legal Arsenal of Illiberalism.”
If constitutional changes are the tank and legislation is the artillery, bureaucratic harassment is the sniper fire.
As we move through 2026, Kim Lane Scheppele’s concept is more relevant than ever. The battle for democracy is no longer fought only at the ballot box or the barricade. It is fought in constitutional courts, administrative tribunals, and the fine print of finance laws. Autocratic legalism teaches us that legal form can mask political substance.
The update (“UPD”) is this: autocrats have become better lawyers. And so, to save democracy, democrats must become better lawyers too—armed with Scheppele’s playbook, not just of what autocrats do, but of how to dismantle their legally woven cages.
Further Reading (2024–2026 Updates):
Legal Veneer: Illiberal agendas are advanced through formally legitimate procedures, such as constitutional amendments and new legislation.
Incrementalism: Backsliding happens via "a death by a thousand cuts"—small, technical changes that may go unnoticed until democracy is effectively hollowed out.
Institutional Capture: The process typically follows a specific "script": Win free and fair elections.
Capture the courts and legislature to remove checks on executive power. Replace neutral civil servants with loyalists.
Rewrite election laws to ensure the ruling party remains in power indefinitely. Current Applications and Developments (2024–2026)
As of early 2026, Scheppele and other scholars highlight several critical updates and case studies:
The "Frankenstate": Scheppele identifies regimes that stitch together constitutional provisions from various liberal democracies to create an amalgamation that actually centralizes power and undermines dissent.
Transnational Learning: 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.
United States Context: 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.
"Autocratic Legalism 2.0": This evolving research area focuses on lower-level administrative maneuvers and the importance of transnational links in both promoting and resisting these regressive changes. Methods of Resistance University of Pennsylvania Law School (former)
Experts like those at the American Constitution Society suggest that stopping autocratic legalism requires: Autocratic Legalism and the Threat to Academic Freedom
Title: The Architecture of Authorship: Kim Lane Scheppele’s Autocratic Legalism and the Façade of the Rule of Law
Introduction: The Death of the Constitution by Constitution In the early 21st century, a disturbing trend emerged in global politics: authoritarian leaders ceased to be the exceptions to the rule of law and began to exploit it. The age of the military coup, characterized by tanks in the street and the suspension of constitutions, has largely given way to a more insidious phenomenon—the stealth takeover. At the forefront of analyzing this shift is legal sociologist Kim Lane Scheppele, whose concept of "autocratic legalism" provides the definitive framework for understanding how modern demagogues dismantle democracy using the very tools designed to protect it.
Scheppele’s theory challenges the traditional assumption that "legality" is synonymous with "legitimacy" or "liberalism." Instead, she posits that modern autocrats are often hyper-legalistic. They do not break the law; they change it. Through a sophisticated process of manipulating constitutions, courts, and bureaucratic procedures, autocratic legalism transforms a democratic system into an authoritarian one without ever stepping outside the bounds of legal procedure. This essay explores the mechanics of Scheppele’s theory, analyzing how law is weaponized to conceal tyranny, how the "Frankenstate" is constructed, and why the procedural shell of democracy often survives long after its soul has been exorcised.
The Mechanism: The Weaponization of Legality The core of Scheppele’s argument lies in the distinction between "rule by law" and "rule of law." In a liberal democracy, the rule of law acts as a constraint on power; the law stands above the ruler. In autocratic legalism, however, the law is instrumentalized—it becomes a weapon for the ruler to consolidate power and neutralize opponents.
Scheppele observes that modern autocrats are often lawyers themselves or surround themselves with legal technocrats. They understand that maintaining a veneer of legality is crucial for both domestic legitimacy and international acceptance. By passing laws through compliant legislatures and securing validation from captured courts, autocrats create a "legal" trajectory toward authoritarianism. This is not anarchy; it is hyper-order. The tragedy, as Scheppele notes, is that the opposition is often paralyzed because the government’s actions are technically legal. Opponents cannot point to a coup; they can only point to a series of bad laws that were passed by majorities that were often secured through unfair but technically legal maneuvers.
Constructing the "Frankenstate" One of Scheppele’s most enduring contributions to the literature is her metaphor of the "Frankenstate." Drawing on the image of Frankenstein’s monster, she describes how autocrats stitch together their regimes using bits and pieces of established democratic systems. They do not invent new, alien forms of government; rather, they find the worst, most repressive elements of various constitutions and combine them into a monster that can overpower the democratic host.
A key aspect of this construction is the exploitation of constitutional loopholes. Scheppele details how Viktor Orbán in Hungary, a primary case study for autocratic legalism, did not simply tear up the constitution. Instead, his Fidesz party used a two-thirds parliamentary majority to rewrite the rules. They passed a new constitution, a media law, and an electoral law that made it nearly impossible for the opposition to win future elections. By gerrymandering districts and altering campaign finance rules, Orbán ensured that he could lose the popular vote yet retain a supermajority. This is the genius of autocratic legalism: the autocrat rigs the game so thoroughly that they can never be voted out, all while pointing to the ballot box as proof of their democratic mandate.
The Façade: Performance and Plausibility Scheppele emphasizes that autocratic legalism relies heavily on the maintenance of democratic forms. Elections are not cancelled; they are skewed. Judges are not fired en masse; the retirement age is lowered to force out dissenters while the court is expanded and packed with loyalists. Civil society is not banned; it is harassed with tax audits, bureaucratic registration hurdles, and "foreign agent" laws.
This creates a paradoxical situation where the institutions of democracy—parliaments, courts, and elections—remain standing, but they are hollowed out. Scheppele argues that this "façade" is essential for the autocrat’s survival. It provides plausible deniability. When the European Union or the international community critiques the regime, the autocrat can point to the functioning parliament and the independent-looking courts and claim that their policies are merely the result of the democratic will of the people. This strategy exploits the international community’s narrow definition of democracy, which often focuses on the presence of elections rather than the fairness of the playing field.
The Role of Complicity: Legal Talent and the Banality of Evil A deeper, more unsettling layer of Scheppele’s analysis involves the human element. Autocratic legalism requires a surplus of legal talent. It needs lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats willing to draft the oppressive laws and stamp them as valid. Scheppele highlights that many of the legal maneuvers used in Hungary, Poland, and Turkey were executed by highly educated professionals who believed they were serving the state—or who were rewarded for their loyalty.
This touches on Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. The destruction of democracy is often carried out not by gun-toting revolutionaries, but by men and women in suits, drafting complex legal texts in comfortable offices. Scheppele’s work forces us to confront the professional responsibility of lawyers and the failure of legal ethics in the face of populist capture. The law is not a self-executing shield; it is a tool that requires human agents to uphold it, and when those agents defect to the autocrat, the law becomes the instrument of its own destruction.
Conclusion: The Challenge for the Future Kim Lane Scheppele’s theory of autocratic legalism serves as a warning that the greatest threat to modern democracy does not come from lawlessness, but from the law itself when divorced from liberal values. It reveals that constitutional checks and balances are not fail-safes, but merely speed bumps for a determined autocrat with a parliamentary majority.
The ultimate implication of Scheppele’s work is that the defense of democracy cannot rely solely on legal technicalities. If the law can be weaponized to destroy liberty, then the solution must be political and cultural, not just juridical. Protecting democracy requires an alert citizenry, a fiercely independent media, and a political opposition capable of framing legal maneuvers as political assaults on freedom. As Scheppele’s analysis of the "Frankenstate" demonstrates, once the pieces of the democratic constitution are stitched together into an autocratic monster, it is often too late to dismantle it through the very legal system that created it. The rule of law, she reminds us, is a fragile convention, maintained not by courts, but by the collective will to restrain power.
This guide synthesizes her key arguments, particularly focusing on the updated nuances in her scholarship regarding how modern autocrats use the law to destroy democracy.
In the twilight of the 20th century, political scientists largely agreed on a simple, reassuring binary. Democracies had courts, constitutions, and the rule of law. Authoritarian regimes had show trials, secret police, and arbitrary edicts. The path from one to the other was violent and obvious—a coup, a revolution, a tank in the square.
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.
No scholar has done more to diagnose, name, and theorize this paradox than Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University (and formerly a long-time affiliated faculty at the University of Pennsylvania’s Law School—a frequent source of confusion given her deep ties to the Penn legal community). Her master concept—autocratic legalism—has become the indispensable keyword for understanding how modern authoritarians use the tools of law to kill the spirit of law.
This article explores the architecture of Scheppele’s theory, its empirical grounding in Central Europe, its evolution through the Trump and Orbán eras, and its urgent implications for liberal democracies today. While the keyword often attaches “UPenn” to her name due to her influential years at Penn’s Law School and the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy, Scheppele’s institutional home is now Princeton. But her intellectual DNA remains deeply woven into the legal realism of the Philadelphia-New York corridor.
In a controversial extension, Scheppele’s 2026 working paper (pre-circulated at Princeton’s “Democratic Resilience” workshop) applies the framework to the United States—not as a full autocracy, but as a case of creeping autocratic legalism. Examples:
Scheppele warns: Autocratic legalism does not require a single dictator. It requires a coordinated legal strategy across federal courts, state legislatures, and partisan attorneys general.
Since 2024, Scheppele and her collaborators (including Laurent Pech, Gábor Halmai, and Wojciech Sadurski) have documented significant evolutions. The keyword “UPD” now signals three major shifts.
Kim Lane Scheppele’s journey from Penn to Princeton, from anthropology to law, from post-Soviet constitutional courts to the Hungarian parliament, has produced one of the most urgent bodies of political-legal thought in the 21st century. Autocratic legalism is her gift to the opposition—a concept sharp enough to cut through the fog of legal bureaucracy and reveal the strongman in the judge’s robe.
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.
In the end, autocratic legalism teaches a lesson that democracies forget at their peril: The coup you don’t notice is the one that arrives in a leather-bound volume, stamped with the state seal, and bearing a signature that says, “I am only following the law.”
The question is whether we will learn to read the fine print before it is too late.
Further Reading (Selected Works by Kim Lane Scheppele):
Institutional Affiliations: Princeton University (Sociology & International Affairs); University of Pennsylvania Law School (former); Central European University (former visiting faculty).
It looks like you're referencing the concept of "autocratic legalism" as developed by political and legal scholar Kim Lane Scheppele.
Here is a concise overview of the concept, its key features, and its significance based on her work (especially her 2018 article "Autocratic Legalism" in the University of Chicago Law Review and related writings on Hungary and Poland).