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POSTS BY Kim Lane Scheppele
22 April 2020
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Don’t Be Fooled by Autocrats!

On 9 April, Vera Jourová, Vice President of the European Commission for values and transparency with lead responsibility for rule of law, gave an interview to Euronews on democracy in the pandemic. A journalist asked whether she believes that Hungary still qualifies as a democracy after the Enabling Act creating an indefinite state of emergency was enacted by the Hungarian Parliament on 30 March. Her answer was not reassuring. Continue reading >>
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09 April 2020
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Corona Constitutional #7: Der Virus und Trump

Kaum ein Land ist zurzeit so hart getroffen von der Corona-Pandemie wie die USA. Ist es Unfähigkeit , dass Trump und die US-Republikaner ihre Möglichkeiten zum Krisenmanagement weitgehend ungenutzt lassen? Oder ist es Strategie? Die Rechtssoziologin und Verfassungsrechtlerin KIM LANE SCHEPPELE kennt sich mit dem autoritären Populismus aus wie kaum sonst jemand, und ihre – ziemlich düstere – Antwort auf diese Frage verrät sie Max Steinbeis in der heutigen Folge unseres Krisenpodcasts. Continue reading >>
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09 April 2020

Underreaction in a Time of Emergency: America as a Nearly Failed State

Not surprisingly, those of us who write about emergencies have been far more concerned about overreaction than underreaction and we have been far more concerned about politically caused emergencies rather than natural disasters. History is littered with the cautionary tales of overreaction to politically caused emergencies. But the dangers of state failure evident in underreaction are underestimated. Continue reading >>
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29 March 2020

Orban’s Emergency

Orbán’s emergency gives him everything he ever dreamed of: The absolute freedom to do what he wants. Of course, reality does have a way of undermining dreams, and Orbán may find that his are no different. The law hands to Orbán the fully-fledged dictatorial powers he would need in order to cling to office when the full weight of the pandemic hits. Continue reading >>
09 March 2020
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Open Letter to the President of the European Commission regarding Poland’s “Muzzle Law”

The current procrastination is akin to dereliction of duty: Waiting to bring infringement actions and to fail to simultaneously seek interim measures when the rule of law in a Member State is so obviously and blatantly deteriorating on an industrial scale only means that the Commission faces a far more serious and intractable problem to deal with later. Continue reading >>
11 December 2019
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Open Letter to the President of the European Commission

Ever since the European Commission initiated a third infringement procedure in respect to the recurrent attacks on the rule of law by Polish authorities last April, the situation has continued to seriously deteriorate. It is now upon the Commission to promptly submit to the European Court of Justice an application for interim measures in the infringement case C-791/19 Commission v Poland now pending before the Court of Justice. Continue reading >>
25 November 2019
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The Tyranny of Values or the Tyranny of One-Party States?

In his contribution ‘Fundamentals on Defending European Values,’ Armin von Bogdandy counsels caution. His arguments are wise in normal times. But we no longer live in normal times. The current governments of at least two EU Member States, Hungary and Poland, are engaged in normative freelancing with the explicit aim of making future democratic rotation impossible. The rogue governments we see today are undermining the values of the European Union when the EU is more popular in these Member States than their own governments are. Continue reading >>
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17 February 2019

Trump’s Non-Emergency Emergency, Part II

Trump evidently declared an emergency just because he wanted to do it. But, as I will show here, the emergency may never come into effect. That doesn’t mean that we should think that the constitutional system of the United States is out of danger. Continue reading >>
15 February 2019

Trump’s Non-Emergency Emergency

The US has entered a state of emergency that is almost surely unconstitutional. But it says something about the state of US constitutional law that it is hard to see how the president can be stopped. Continue reading >>
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12 November 2018
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Never Missing an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity: The Council Legal Service Opinion on the Commission’s EU budget-related rule of law mechanism

Regrettably, we need to add the Council’s Legal Service to the list of key EU actors that seem intent on ignoring the existential threat to the Union posed by the spreading rule of law rot amongst EU member governments. In a (non-public) opinion on the proposed regulation of the Commission to create rule of law conditionality in the multi-annual financial framework adopted on 25 October 2018, the CLS indeed put forward multiple unpersuasive legal arguments to claim that the Commission’s proposal cannot be adopted. With this opinion, the CLS is advising the Council to actually prevent other institutions of the EU from doing their job to uphold and defend the set of common values on which the EU is based. Continue reading >>
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