Abstract

This Article explores the role of lawyers in democratic backsliding—the degradation of democratic institutions and practices using law rather than violence. The Article’s central aim is to set an agenda and outline an approach to studying the professional paradox at the center of backsliding: why and how lawyers attack the rule of law. It thus seeks to shift the scholarly lens from the conventional view of lawyers as defenders of democracy to investigate lawyers as authors of autocracy. Toward that end, the Article theorizes the legal profession as a site of backsliding, outlining a framework that positions lawyers in relation to distinct pathways of autocratization on the slow road of gradual democratic decline and the fast track of imminent democratic attack.

Full paper: Lawyers in Backsliding Democracy

Speaker

Scott Cummings holds the inaugural Robert Henigson Chair in Legal Ethics at the UCLA School of Law, where he has taught since 2002. He is the founding Faculty Director of the Program on Legal Ethics and the Profession, which promotes research and dialogue on the professional challenges of global legal practice and the role of legal ethics in democracy.