The CEU Democracy Institute’s Rule of Law Workgroup cordially invites you to a lecture by Kim Lane Scheppele (Princeton University), followed by a panel discussion.
Program:
11:00-12:00 Kim Lane Scheppele: A Counter-Constitutional Revolution: Donald Trump and the Rule of Law
Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, his administration has operated with lightning speed to upend many certainties of law and politics. How can we understand these changes? In this lecture, Prof. Scheppele will argue that we need to deconstruct attacks on the rule of law into different streams, each run by different people with different legal logics. Some policies stretch preexisting law in unrecognizable ways, while other policies seek to destroy law without replacement. Some policies enforce the law selectively, putting the president and his inner circle above the law even as they subject others to harsh enforcement of that same law. In perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of the Trump presidency, some within his administration have launched a counter-constitutional revolution to remake the US Constitution as we knew it, replacing the prior system of checks and balances with a super-presidency, thus destroying democracy by law. By disentangling these different strands, we can see that Trump is not a “he” but a “they.” Given the multiplicity of attacks on the rule of law, we may need a multipronged effort to restore the rule of law when the Trump era is over.
12:00-12:30 Coffee break
12:30-13:30 Reaction panel on Pro- and Counter-Constituttional Revolutions and Q&A
Panelists:
- Kim Lane Scheppele, Princeton University
- Péter Krekó, Political Capital research institute
- András Kádár, Hungarian Helsinki Committee
- Barbara Grabowska-Moroz, CEU Democracy Institute
- Moderator: Benedetta Lobina, CEU Democracy Institute
Kim Lane Scheppele is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University. Scheppele’s work focuses on the rise and fall of constitutional democracy. After 1989, Scheppele studied the new constitutional courts of Hungary and Russia, living in both places for extended periods. After 2001, she researched the effects of the international “war on terror” on constitutional protections around the world. Since 2010, she has been documenting attacks on constitutional democracy by legalistic autocrats. Her book Destroying (and Restoring) Democracy by Law is forthcoming from Harvard University Press.
Scheppele started her career in the political science department at the University of Michigan in 1984 before moving to the law school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996 and then joining Princeton in 2005. Along the way, she was the founding director of the gender program at Central European University Budapest from 1996-1998 and she has held visiting faculty positions in the law schools at Yale, Harvard, Erasmus/Rotterdam, Humboldt/Berlin and Stanford.
