: 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.
Unlike 20th-century dictators who suspended constitutions, modern illiberal leaders treat the constitution as a weapon. Scheppele outlines three core pillars of this strategy: autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd
[Democratic Election Mandate] ➔ [Incremental Legal Re-engineering] ➔ [Constitutional Capture] : Law is treated as a weapon for
In her seminal 2018 paper published in the University of Chicago Law Review , Scheppele outlines how "legalistic autocrats" weaponize the very tools of liberal democracy to kill it. The strategy relies on two main pillars: autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd