K L Scheppele
Biographic Data
| ID | 11939 |
|---|---|
| NAME | K L Scheppele |
| GIVEN NAMES | K L |
| FAMILY NAME | Scheppele |
| SIGNATURE | SCHEPPELE K L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7153-6713 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 439 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Rights into Structures: Judging in a Time of Democratic Backsliding
This article explores how the new generation of legalistic autocrats consolidates power—not by committing mass human rights violations as a way of consolidating power as authoritarians of the twentieth century did, but instead by attacking checks and balances so that democratic institutions are weakened. Judges at transnational courts, faced with evidence of these attacks, are developing a jurisprudence through which they transform the vindicatio…
What they say and what they do: Populist distraction and dual-use political technologies in the European union
Money for nothing? EU institutions’ uneven record of freezing EU funds to enforce EU values
The Arts at Risk: A Convening
The following essays by Vincent Brown, Paul Chan, and Kim Lane Scheppele are edited versions of talks given at the panel discussion "The Arts at Risk: A Convening" on May 27, 2025, at the Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York, organized by members of the October editorial board.1 We asked these thinkers to address the issue of "rewriting history " in the first months of Donald J. Trump's second term as president. Censorship of the arts in the service …
The Life of the Rule of Law
The rule of law has become all things to all people, which is precisely why it has been hard to define. Rather than attempt that feat, this article traces how the rule of law has developed as a set of specific governing practices both in the history of comparative law and in recent policy debates. Whereas national legal traditions blended ideas about the constraining effects of law with normative ideas about the organization of politics, the poli…
The life and death of constitutions
Design by LSA member Danielle Rudes at George Mason University The Law and Society meetings in 2019 are taking place in Washington DC at a time when many of our international friends are wondering whether they should travel to a place where the national president has made border crossings arbitrary and painful, denied visas to those coming from disfavored countries and in general trampled on the ideals that the United States has long preached. To…
How Viktor Orbán Wins
On 3 April 2022, Viktor Orbán won his fourth straight election with his fourth straight supermajority in parliament that allows him to amend the constitution at will. This essay traces how he managed to do that. Orbán's skillful use of the war in Ukraine and his major expansion of social benefits right before the election were important in that victory. But even more crucial were the rules of the game that Orbán established after his election vic…
The Diseases of Constitutional Democracy: Lessons from the Project on Autocratic Legalism
Executive Underreach, in Pandemics and Otherwise
Legal scholars are familiar with the problem of executive overreach, especially in emergencies. But sometimes, instead of being too audacious or extreme, a national executive's attempts to address a true threat prove far too limited and insubstantial. In this Essay, we seek to define and clarify the phenomenon of executive underreach, with special reference to the COVID-19 crisis; to outline ways in which such underreach may compromise constituti…
Law Without Accidents
This chapter shows how traditional tort analysis differs from sociological strategies for thinking about accidents. It examines the ways in which some sociological knowledge has been taken into account in traditional tort doctrine and assesses the ways in which two of the major institutional changes in that field have improved the traditional tort track record in considering sociological knowledge. Accidents are only one source of pain and suffer…
The fragility of an independent judiciary: Lessons from Hungary and Poland—and the European Union
When the European Union was founded, it was assumed that all Member States admitted as consolidated democracies would maintain their constitutional commitments. In recent years, Hungary and Poland have challenged this premise as elected autocratic governments in those countries have captured independent institutions and threatened long-term democracy. The judiciaries of these countries have been hard hit. In this paper, we trace what has happened…
Illiberalism Within: Rule of Law Backsliding in the EU
How should the European Union cope with Member States that no longer respect the basic values of the Union? This article reviews the responses of the major European Union institutions to Poland and Hungary as their governments removed checks on their power, eliminated the independence of judiciaries and failed to honour their European commitments. As the article demonstrates, the responses of EU institutions have so far been ineffective in bringi…
Hungary’s Illiberal Turn: Disabling the Constitution
Understanding Hungary’s Constitutional Revolution
The Rule of Law and the Frankenstate: Why Governance Checklists Do Not Work
Hungary’s Illiberal Turn: Disabling the Constitution
Hungary’s 2010 election brought to power a Fidesz parliamentary supermajority led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In just two years, they have fundamentally changed the constitutional order of Hungary. The current government now has very few checks on its own power, but the new constitutional order permits the governing party to lodge its loyalists in crucial long-term positions with veto power over what future governments might do. As a result, …
Legal and Extralegal Emergencies
What should a duly constituted and legitimate government do when political crises threaten the very viability of the state? The usual answers to this question fall into two camps: the legal and the extralegal. The legalists argue that crises of state must be met by entirely legal responses, and typically constitutionalize emergency powers by ringing them round with various forms of constraint. The extralegalists argue that serious crises of state…
Le droit de la sécurité internationale: Le terrorisme et l'empire sécuritaire de l'après-11 septembre 2001
À l’âge impérial classique, les pays situés au centre du pouvoir faisaient la conquête de territoires qu’ils administraient ensuite directement. Aujourd’hui, la manipulation à distance de ressources matérielles et humaines n’a pas cessé, mais elle fait désormais l’objet de nouvelles formes de gestion. Depuis le 11 septembre 2001, la « guerre globale contre le terrorisme » a conduit les centres représentant la « civilisation » à contrôler les péri…
Constitutional Ethnography: An Introduction
Cultures of Facts
Why is it so hard for relevant social science findings to ake their way into courtrooms, either at the trial level or on appeal? From the perspective of the social scientist, Patricia Wald is the ideal judge—someone who takes empirical research seriously and wants to use it when she can. But the fact that even a sympathetic judge like Judge Wald finds this to be difficult should tell us something. Legal professionals and social scientists have di…
Constitutional Negotiations: Political Contexts of Judicial Activism in Post-Soviet Europe
Constitutional courts in a number of new democracies have become very powerful institutions with a wide range of capacities. But how have they been able to achieve this power politically? This article examines the Hungarian and Russian constitutional courts in their political contexts and shows how these courts have both shaped the political environments in which they have worked and have been shaped by them. Rather than finding that the courts a…
Rules of Law: The Complexity of Legality in Hungary
The paper posits the existence in Hungary of three levels of legalism, defined as legal consciousness and legal compliance: the constitutional level, the level of relations between state and citizen, and the level of citizen-to-citizen interaction. The sociological analysis of all three levels, based on opinion polling and on the analysis of constitutional complaints, legal verdicts, and other considerations, permits us to identify a difference b…
The History of Normalcy: Rethinking Legal Autonomy and the Relative Dependence of Law at the End of the Soviet Empire
Manners of Imagining the real
What counts as evidence? What is accepted as true in court given the evidence admitted? How are subordinated peoples further oppressed in courts because they cannot demonstrate that their experience is fact? Drawing on the confirmation brings for Clarence Thomas as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and the testimony of Anita Hill in those hearings, the author explores the ways in which representations of sexual violence against women can be …
Legal Theory and Social Theory
While social theory and legal theory were once closely intertwined, contemporary American sociology pays scant attention to recent developments in legal theory. But the problems that legal theory currently wrestles with are very similar to those with which sociology is now centrally concerned. This essay reviews major schools of thought in contemporary legal theory to introduce sociologists to some potentially useful literatures on the meaning of…
Hungary’s Illiberal Turn: Disabling the Constitution
Hungary’s 2010 election brought to power a Fidesz parliamentary supermajority led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In just two years, they have fundamentally changed the constitutional order of Hungary. The current government now has very few checks on its own power, but the new constitutional order permits the governing party to lodge its loyalists in crucial long-term positions with veto power over what future governments might do. As a result, …
The Rule of Law and the Frankenstate: Why Governance Checklists Do Not Work
How Viktor Orbán Wins
On 3 April 2022, Viktor Orbán won his fourth straight election with his fourth straight supermajority in parliament that allows him to amend the constitution at will. This essay traces how he managed to do that. Orbán's skillful use of the war in Ukraine and his major expansion of social benefits right before the election were important in that victory. But even more crucial were the rules of the game that Orbán established after his election vic…
Constitutional Ethnography: An Introduction
The fragility of an independent judiciary: Lessons from Hungary and Poland—and the European Union
When the European Union was founded, it was assumed that all Member States admitted as consolidated democracies would maintain their constitutional commitments. In recent years, Hungary and Poland have challenged this premise as elected autocratic governments in those countries have captured independent institutions and threatened long-term democracy. The judiciaries of these countries have been hard hit. In this paper, we trace what has happened…
Salience of Crime and Support for Harsher Criminal Sanctions
This paper examines the relation between the salience of crime and support for harsher legal sanctions (capital punishment, harsher courts) in American public opinion. Many of the “simple theories” of effect are not supported. People who are more afraid or who have been victimized do not necessarily favor harsher sanctions. At the ecological level, in environments which are characterized by higher rates of crime and greater fear of crime, respond…
Money for nothing? EU institutions’ uneven record of freezing EU funds to enforce EU values
The History of Normalcy: Rethinking Legal Autonomy and the Relative Dependence of Law at the End of the Soviet Empire
Legal Theory and Social Theory
While social theory and legal theory were once closely intertwined, contemporary American sociology pays scant attention to recent developments in legal theory. But the problems that legal theory currently wrestles with are very similar to those with which sociology is now centrally concerned. This essay reviews major schools of thought in contemporary legal theory to introduce sociologists to some potentially useful literatures on the meaning of…
Executive Underreach, in Pandemics and Otherwise
Legal scholars are familiar with the problem of executive overreach, especially in emergencies. But sometimes, instead of being too audacious or extreme, a national executive's attempts to address a true threat prove far too limited and insubstantial. In this Essay, we seek to define and clarify the phenomenon of executive underreach, with special reference to the COVID-19 crisis; to outline ways in which such underreach may compromise constituti…
Through Women's Eyes: Defining Danger in the Wake of Sexual Assault
Most women who have been sexually assaulted see at least some situations in the world as being more dangerous following their assault experiences. Based on in‐depth interviews with 94 women who were either raped or avoided being raped during an attack, this study examines the effect of the events that occurred during the attack and the circumstances surrounding the attack as factors that determine later perceptions of danger. Women who have been …
Manners of Imagining the real
What counts as evidence? What is accepted as true in court given the evidence admitted? How are subordinated peoples further oppressed in courts because they cannot demonstrate that their experience is fact? Drawing on the confirmation brings for Clarence Thomas as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and the testimony of Anita Hill in those hearings, the author explores the ways in which representations of sexual violence against women can be …
Constitutional Negotiations: Political Contexts of Judicial Activism in Post-Soviet Europe
Constitutional courts in a number of new democracies have become very powerful institutions with a wide range of capacities. But how have they been able to achieve this power politically? This article examines the Hungarian and Russian constitutional courts in their political contexts and shows how these courts have both shaped the political environments in which they have worked and have been shaped by them. Rather than finding that the courts a…
The life and death of constitutions
Design by LSA member Danielle Rudes at George Mason University The Law and Society meetings in 2019 are taking place in Washington DC at a time when many of our international friends are wondering whether they should travel to a place where the national president has made border crossings arbitrary and painful, denied visas to those coming from disfavored countries and in general trampled on the ideals that the United States has long preached. To…
Rules of Law: The Complexity of Legality in Hungary
The paper posits the existence in Hungary of three levels of legalism, defined as legal consciousness and legal compliance: the constitutional level, the level of relations between state and citizen, and the level of citizen-to-citizen interaction. The sociological analysis of all three levels, based on opinion polling and on the analysis of constitutional complaints, legal verdicts, and other considerations, permits us to identify a difference b…
The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring about Social Change
In follow-up studies, dozens of reviews, and even a book of essays evaluating his conclusions, Gerald N. Rosenberg's critics - not to mention his supporters - have spent nearly two decades debating the arguments he first put forward in Hollow Hope. With this substantially expanded second edition of his landmark work, Rosenberg himself steps back into the fray, responding to criticism and adding chapters on the same-sex marriage battle that ask an…
Facing Facts in Legal Interpretation
Research Article| April 01 1990 Facing Facts in Legal Interpretation Kim Lane Scheppele Kim Lane Scheppele Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Representations (1990) 30: 42–77. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928446 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kim Lane Scheppele…
What they say and what they do: Populist distraction and dual-use political technologies in the European union
The Life of the Rule of Law
The rule of law has become all things to all people, which is precisely why it has been hard to define. Rather than attempt that feat, this article traces how the rule of law has developed as a set of specific governing practices both in the history of comparative law and in recent policy debates. Whereas national legal traditions blended ideas about the constraining effects of law with normative ideas about the organization of politics, the poli…
It's Just Not Right: The Ethics of Insider Trading
Much of
The High Cost of Virtue: A Reply to Linda Hirshman
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Salience of Crime and Support for Harsher Criminal Sanctions
This paper examines the relation between the salience of crime and support for harsher legal sanctions (capital punishment, harsher courts) in American public opinion. Many of the “simple theories” of effect are not supported. People who are more afraid or who have been victimized do not necessarily favor harsher sanctions. At the ecological level, in environments which are characterized by higher rates of crime and greater fear of crime, respond…
Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her
In this famously provocative cornerstone of feminist literature, Susan Griffin explores the identification of women with the earth--both as sustenance for humanity and as victim of male rage. Starting from Plato's fateful division of the world into spirit and matter, her analysis of how patriarchal Western philosophy and religion have used language and science to bolster their power over both women and nature is brilliant and persuasive, coming a…
Crime and Punishment--Changing Attitudes in America
Women and Social Change in America
The Politics of Justice: A Study in Law, Social Science, and Public Policy
Advanced Questionnaire Design
Between Public and Private: Lost Boundaries of the Self.Joseph Bensman , Robert Lilienfeld
Through Women's Eyes: Defining Danger in the Wake of Sexual Assault
Most women who have been sexually assaulted see at least some situations in the world as being more dangerous following their assault experiences. Based on in‐depth interviews with 94 women who were either raped or avoided being raped during an attack, this study examines the effect of the events that occurred during the attack and the circumstances surrounding the attack as factors that determine later perceptions of danger. Women who have been …
Living a Dissertation
Constructive Marxian Theory
The High Cost of Virtue: A Reply to Linda Hirshman
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The High Cost of Virtue: A Reply to Linda Hirshman
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Facing Facts in Legal Interpretation
Research Article| April 01 1990 Facing Facts in Legal Interpretation Kim Lane Scheppele Kim Lane Scheppele Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Representations (1990) 30: 42–77. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928446 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kim Lane Scheppele…
Fairness and Secrecy: A Contractarian Approach
This article examines the law pertaining to secrecy in contractual bargaining and argues that courts decide cases more consistently with contractarian principles than with economic ones. The economic theory of law claims that courts ought to require people to disclose secret information when that information was acquired as a by-product of other productive activity and to allow people to keep information secret when it was the product of signific…
The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring about Social Change
In follow-up studies, dozens of reviews, and even a book of essays evaluating his conclusions, Gerald N. Rosenberg's critics - not to mention his supporters - have spent nearly two decades debating the arguments he first put forward in Hollow Hope. With this substantially expanded second edition of his landmark work, Rosenberg himself steps back into the fray, responding to criticism and adding chapters on the same-sex marriage battle that ask an…
It's Just Not Right: The Ethics of Insider Trading
Much of
Manners of Imagining the real
What counts as evidence? What is accepted as true in court given the evidence admitted? How are subordinated peoples further oppressed in courts because they cannot demonstrate that their experience is fact? Drawing on the confirmation brings for Clarence Thomas as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and the testimony of Anita Hill in those hearings, the author explores the ways in which representations of sexual violence against women can be …
Legal Theory and Social Theory
While social theory and legal theory were once closely intertwined, contemporary American sociology pays scant attention to recent developments in legal theory. But the problems that legal theory currently wrestles with are very similar to those with which sociology is now centrally concerned. This essay reviews major schools of thought in contemporary legal theory to introduce sociologists to some potentially useful literatures on the meaning of…
Rules of Law: The Complexity of Legality in Hungary
The paper posits the existence in Hungary of three levels of legalism, defined as legal consciousness and legal compliance: the constitutional level, the level of relations between state and citizen, and the level of citizen-to-citizen interaction. The sociological analysis of all three levels, based on opinion polling and on the analysis of constitutional complaints, legal verdicts, and other considerations, permits us to identify a difference b…
The History of Normalcy: Rethinking Legal Autonomy and the Relative Dependence of Law at the End of the Soviet Empire
Cultures of Facts
Why is it so hard for relevant social science findings to ake their way into courtrooms, either at the trial level or on appeal? From the perspective of the social scientist, Patricia Wald is the ideal judge—someone who takes empirical research seriously and wants to use it when she can. But the fact that even a sympathetic judge like Judge Wald finds this to be difficult should tell us something. Legal professionals and social scientists have di…
Constitutional Negotiations: Political Contexts of Judicial Activism in Post-Soviet Europe
Constitutional courts in a number of new democracies have become very powerful institutions with a wide range of capacities. But how have they been able to achieve this power politically? This article examines the Hungarian and Russian constitutional courts in their political contexts and shows how these courts have both shaped the political environments in which they have worked and have been shaped by them. Rather than finding that the courts a…
Constitutional Ethnography: An Introduction
Le droit de la sécurité internationale: Le terrorisme et l'empire sécuritaire de l'après-11 septembre 2001
À l’âge impérial classique, les pays situés au centre du pouvoir faisaient la conquête de territoires qu’ils administraient ensuite directement. Aujourd’hui, la manipulation à distance de ressources matérielles et humaines n’a pas cessé, mais elle fait désormais l’objet de nouvelles formes de gestion. Depuis le 11 septembre 2001, la « guerre globale contre le terrorisme » a conduit les centres représentant la « civilisation » à contrôler les péri…
Legal and Extralegal Emergencies
What should a duly constituted and legitimate government do when political crises threaten the very viability of the state? The usual answers to this question fall into two camps: the legal and the extralegal. The legalists argue that crises of state must be met by entirely legal responses, and typically constitutionalize emergency powers by ringing them round with various forms of constraint. The extralegalists argue that serious crises of state…
Political science (30 works) · Law (23 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law (15 works) · Economics (13 works) · Law and economics (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Judicial and Constitutional Studies (11 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Criminology (8 works)