Professor Kim Lane Scheppele

Professor Scheppele is the Laurance S Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University, where her work focuses on the rise and fall of constitutional democracy.

Earlier this year, she delivered the 2025 John M Kelly Lecture at UCD Sutherland School of Law on the subject “Democracy in Danger: The Global Challenge of Autocratic Legalism”.

In the lecture, Professor Scheppele showed how democracy has come under attack around the world, and took the audience through what she calls the “autocratic legalistic playbook” to demonstrate how entrenched law can prevent the restoration of democracy.

A recording of the lecture can be found on YouTube.