Cummings, Scott L., The Autocratic Legal Playbook (August 14, 2025). UCLA Law Review, Forthcoming, UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 25-31, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5392409 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5392409 This Article examines the development and rapid innovation of the autocratic legal playbook in America: the strategic blueprint used to destroy democracy through law. It argues that this …
Batesmith, A., & McEvoy, K. (2025). “Closeted” cause lawyering in authoritarian Cambodia. Law & Society Review, 59(3), 463–495. doi:10.1017/lsr.2025.29 Using Cambodia as a case study, this article examines cause lawyering in a repressive political environment. It focuses on “closeted” cause lawyering, a practice they define as the intentional pursuit of change through the legal process that is …
Kwong, Y. H. (2025). The Legal Profession in Battle: Cause Lawyers Versus State-Embedded Lawyers in Hong Kong’s Democratization. Social & Legal Studies, 34(4), 580-601. The existing literature has long recognized that cause lawyers play important roles in fighting for political justice. However, the implications of how the state responds to these lawyers have yet to be comprehensively …
Kroncke, J. J. (2025). Legal Complicity in an Age of Resurgent Authoritarianism. Geo. J. Legal Ethics, 38, 75. Faith in end of history narratives emergent at the end of the twentieth century carried powerful ethical implications for engagement with authoritarian regimes. The most widespread of these narratives was modernization theory: the idea that economic development would invariably …
Wendel, W. B. (2022). Lawyer shaming. U. Ill. L. Rev., 175. The Lincoln Project’s effort to shame law firms working on behalf of the Trump campaign is only the most recent example of the public criticism, even vilification, directed against lawyers who represent unpopular clients. The legal profession is mostly unified in its response, which appeals …
Litman, L. (2020). Lawyers’ Democratic Dysfunction. Drake L. Rev., 68, 303. As part of the symposium on Jack Balkin and Sandy Levinson’s Democracy and Dysfunction, this Article documents another source of the dysfunction that the authors observe-elite lawyers’ unwillingness to break ranks with other elite lawyers who participate in the destruction of various norms that are integral …
Holgado, B. G., & Urribarri, R. S. (2024). The Dark Side of Legalism: Abuse of the Law and Democratic Erosion in Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela. American Behavioral Scientist, 68(12), 1578-1596. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241268332 (Original work published 2024) The article investigates why some elected leaders successfully employ legalistic strategies to erode democracy from within and under what conditions …
Michelson, E., & Li, K. (2012, May). Judicial performance without independence: the delivery of justice and political legitimacy in rural China. In Prepared for workshop on works-in-progress on Chinese law. The debate over whether weak judicial independence undermines judicial performance and regime legitimacy in authoritarian contexts remains unresolved. Using survey data from 23 Chinese villages in …
de Sa e Silva, Fabio de. “Autocratic Legalism 2.0: Insights from a Global Collaborative Research Project.” Verfassung Und Recht in Übersee / Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America 55, no. 4 (2022): 419–40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27305889. Since the early 2000s, scholars have increasingly examined the phenomenon of democratic backsliding. While legal analysis was initially peripheral …
de Sa e Silva, F. (2020). From Car Wash to Bolsonaro: Law and lawyers in Brazil’s illiberal turn (2014–2018). Journal of Law and Society, 47(S1), S51–S73. https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12250 The article examines the role of law and lawyers in Brazil’s recent democratic decline. While legal professionals are often depicted as either victims of or counterforces …