Pub Date : 2022-05-16DOI: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050520-101425
R. Sandefur, Emily Denne
Researchers have launched a new era of studies exploring relationships between legal services regulation and access to justice. These scholarly developments respond to recent changes in how Anglo-American jurisdictions regulate the practice of law, changing who can make money from the practice of law, who can engage in it, and who can direct and control it. Often described as projects of deregulation, most are actually acts of reregulation. This article reviews empirical evidence of the relationship between these changes and access to justice. While evidence suggests some promise for increasing access, particularly through lawyerless legal services, most of these projects are in early stages and their impacts on access to justice will take some time to understand. Because much remains to explore, we also offer a research agenda for this emerging subfield. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
{"title":"Access to Justice and Legal Services Regulatory Reform","authors":"R. Sandefur, Emily Denne","doi":"10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050520-101425","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050520-101425","url":null,"abstract":"Researchers have launched a new era of studies exploring relationships between legal services regulation and access to justice. These scholarly developments respond to recent changes in how Anglo-American jurisdictions regulate the practice of law, changing who can make money from the practice of law, who can engage in it, and who can direct and control it. Often described as projects of deregulation, most are actually acts of reregulation. This article reviews empirical evidence of the relationship between these changes and access to justice. While evidence suggests some promise for increasing access, particularly through lawyerless legal services, most of these projects are in early stages and their impacts on access to justice will take some time to understand. Because much remains to explore, we also offer a research agenda for this emerging subfield. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.","PeriodicalId":47338,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Law and Social Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43408142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110921-105921
Fabio de Sa e Silva
In democratic backsliding, threats to democracy no longer come from abrupt, radical ruptures promoted by those who are close to, but outside of, state power. They come from those who win elections and, while in office, systematically undermine accountability institutions and minority rights. Zakaria used the term illiberal democracies to describe these regimes where popularly elected governments are divorced from political freedoms and accountability. Law is not absent from these stories. Rising autocrats seek to make their moves legal and use law—as a weapon or as a shield—in attempts to amass power and suppress opposition. Authors coined the term autocratic legalism to describe these power-grabbing tactics that operate through law. Others use different concepts, such as constitutional retrogression or abusive constitutionalism. I review this growing body of literature and outline a research agenda on the encounters between law and illiberalism. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
{"title":"Law and Illiberalism: A Sociolegal Review and Research Road Map","authors":"Fabio de Sa e Silva","doi":"10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110921-105921","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110921-105921","url":null,"abstract":"In democratic backsliding, threats to democracy no longer come from abrupt, radical ruptures promoted by those who are close to, but outside of, state power. They come from those who win elections and, while in office, systematically undermine accountability institutions and minority rights. Zakaria used the term illiberal democracies to describe these regimes where popularly elected governments are divorced from political freedoms and accountability. Law is not absent from these stories. Rising autocrats seek to make their moves legal and use law—as a weapon or as a shield—in attempts to amass power and suppress opposition. Authors coined the term autocratic legalism to describe these power-grabbing tactics that operate through law. Others use different concepts, such as constitutional retrogression or abusive constitutionalism. I review this growing body of literature and outline a research agenda on the encounters between law and illiberalism. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.","PeriodicalId":47338,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Law and Social Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42806319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-28DOI: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-120621-012645
Robert A. Mikos
Interest in psychedelics is booming, heralding a possible psychedelic renaissance in the United States. But policy makers interested in expanding access to psychedelic substances would be wise to heed lessons gleaned from the past 25 years of marijuana law reforms. That experience suggests that it may prove impossible to repeal or narrow the federal ban on psychedelics in the near term, but that states provide an alternative pathway to reform. Still, to blunt the risk of a federal crackdown, policy makers may need to sacrifice certain policy goals. Furthermore, until the public warms to a broader psychedelic renaissance, policy makers may pursue narrow reforms. Policy makers will also need to address thorny questions over how psychedelics will be supplied once legalized. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
{"title":"Observations on 25 Years of Cannabis Law Reforms and Their Implications for the Psychedelic Renaissance in the United States","authors":"Robert A. Mikos","doi":"10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-120621-012645","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-120621-012645","url":null,"abstract":"Interest in psychedelics is booming, heralding a possible psychedelic renaissance in the United States. But policy makers interested in expanding access to psychedelic substances would be wise to heed lessons gleaned from the past 25 years of marijuana law reforms. That experience suggests that it may prove impossible to repeal or narrow the federal ban on psychedelics in the near term, but that states provide an alternative pathway to reform. Still, to blunt the risk of a federal crackdown, policy makers may need to sacrifice certain policy goals. Furthermore, until the public warms to a broader psychedelic renaissance, policy makers may pursue narrow reforms. Policy makers will also need to address thorny questions over how psychedelics will be supplied once legalized. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.","PeriodicalId":47338,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Law and Social Science","volume":"17 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138509591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-18DOI: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050420-104012
Kathryn Hendley
This article assesses the usefulness of Fraenkel's concept of the dual state for understanding the role of law under authoritarianism. The concept, reframed as legal dualism, helps make sense of legal systems in which law matters most, but not all, of the time. A review of other analytical frameworks social scientists use to study authoritarian law reveals that they focus on the predilection of authoritarian leaders to manipulate law and courts to advance their interests. They pay little attention to how mundane disputes are handled. Only legal dualism contemplates multiple narratives of law that are a reality in contemporary authoritarian regimes. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
{"title":"Legal Dualism as a Framework for Analyzing the Role of Law under Authoritarianism","authors":"Kathryn Hendley","doi":"10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050420-104012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050420-104012","url":null,"abstract":"This article assesses the usefulness of Fraenkel's concept of the dual state for understanding the role of law under authoritarianism. The concept, reframed as legal dualism, helps make sense of legal systems in which law matters most, but not all, of the time. A review of other analytical frameworks social scientists use to study authoritarian law reveals that they focus on the predilection of authoritarian leaders to manipulate law and courts to advance their interests. They pay little attention to how mundane disputes are handled. Only legal dualism contemplates multiple narratives of law that are a reality in contemporary authoritarian regimes. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.","PeriodicalId":47338,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Law and Social Science","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42463388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-18DOI: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050520-104423
L. Vanhala
The mobilization of law to address the degradation of the environment implicates a wide range of institutions, actors, and materials. This article maps developments in the study of environmental legal mobilization. It examines the different theoretical approaches that account for why and how groups mobilize the law (or do not), including explanations focusing on law; legal opportunity structures; resources; and/or ideas, identities, and knowledge. It then considers some of the methodological challenges of studying environmental legal mobilization and highlights recent efforts to overcome them and broaden the scope of the analysis. The article then identifies four trends that are shaping the mobilization of law: ( a) changing forms of environmental law and regulation; ( b) shifts in the political landscape, including repression of civil society and the undermining of the rule of law; ( c) the growing diversity of the environmental movement; and ( d) the cumulative impacts of environmental and climate degradation on the very institutions, processes, and resources available for the mobilization of law. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
{"title":"Environmental Legal Mobilization","authors":"L. Vanhala","doi":"10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050520-104423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050520-104423","url":null,"abstract":"The mobilization of law to address the degradation of the environment implicates a wide range of institutions, actors, and materials. This article maps developments in the study of environmental legal mobilization. It examines the different theoretical approaches that account for why and how groups mobilize the law (or do not), including explanations focusing on law; legal opportunity structures; resources; and/or ideas, identities, and knowledge. It then considers some of the methodological challenges of studying environmental legal mobilization and highlights recent efforts to overcome them and broaden the scope of the analysis. The article then identifies four trends that are shaping the mobilization of law: ( a) changing forms of environmental law and regulation; ( b) shifts in the political landscape, including repression of civil society and the undermining of the rule of law; ( c) the growing diversity of the environmental movement; and ( d) the cumulative impacts of environmental and climate degradation on the very institutions, processes, and resources available for the mobilization of law. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.","PeriodicalId":47338,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Law and Social Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44446380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-18DOI: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050520-100547
S. Shapiro
This article reviews the fate of truth and falsehood outside of the courtroom, largely—but not exclusively—in the United States. Describing opportunities and techniques to mislead or deceive on and off the Internet and social media, it focuses on the evolving social control response undertaken by institutions and increasingly by distributed networks: government regulators, private actors, self-regulators, crowds, third parties, platform architecture, and technology. The review highlights the turbulent legal and regulatory challenges encountered as existing rules do not quite fit the virtual world, free speech protections tie the hands of legislators and regulators in some parts of the world, and massive private corporations—whose profitability is maximized by user engagement with inflammatory and often false messages—control much of what can and cannot be said. Competing media, platforms, and regulators usher in a post-truth era with contested arbiters of truth and dire warnings of an epistemological crisis. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
{"title":"To Tell the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth: Truth Seeking and Truth Telling in Law (and Other Arenas)","authors":"S. Shapiro","doi":"10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050520-100547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-050520-100547","url":null,"abstract":"This article reviews the fate of truth and falsehood outside of the courtroom, largely—but not exclusively—in the United States. Describing opportunities and techniques to mislead or deceive on and off the Internet and social media, it focuses on the evolving social control response undertaken by institutions and increasingly by distributed networks: government regulators, private actors, self-regulators, crowds, third parties, platform architecture, and technology. The review highlights the turbulent legal and regulatory challenges encountered as existing rules do not quite fit the virtual world, free speech protections tie the hands of legislators and regulators in some parts of the world, and massive private corporations—whose profitability is maximized by user engagement with inflammatory and often false messages—control much of what can and cannot be said. Competing media, platforms, and regulators usher in a post-truth era with contested arbiters of truth and dire warnings of an epistemological crisis. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 18 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.","PeriodicalId":47338,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Law and Social Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47167453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-13DOI: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-021721-091626
Eve M. Brank, Lindsey E. Wylie
The decision of whether to hold someone legally responsible raises both philosophical and psychological questions. Philosophically, legal responsibility derives from either what someone did or who someone is—deed or role responsibility. For both the young and the very old, responsibility for bad actions is intertwined with psychological definitions of competency and capacity. For the young, the law assumes incompetence until a certain chronological age or court determination. For the old, no automatic chronological age is determinative; rather, the law assumes competence until a court determines otherwise. These automatic or court determinations impact legal responsibility in both the civil and criminal law contexts for both the young and the old. Additionally, special circumstances create responsibilities for others in relation to the young and old.
{"title":"Legal Responsibility Among the Young and the Elderly","authors":"Eve M. Brank, Lindsey E. Wylie","doi":"10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-021721-091626","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-021721-091626","url":null,"abstract":"The decision of whether to hold someone legally responsible raises both philosophical and psychological questions. Philosophically, legal responsibility derives from either what someone did or who someone is—deed or role responsibility. For both the young and the very old, responsibility for bad actions is intertwined with psychological definitions of competency and capacity. For the young, the law assumes incompetence until a certain chronological age or court determination. For the old, no automatic chronological age is determinative; rather, the law assumes competence until a court determines otherwise. These automatic or court determinations impact legal responsibility in both the civil and criminal law contexts for both the young and the old. Additionally, special circumstances create responsibilities for others in relation to the young and old.","PeriodicalId":47338,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Law and Social Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47046342","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-13DOI: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-113020-085456
M. Berry, Milli Lake
Postwar recovery efforts foreground gender equality as a key component of building more liberal democracies. This review explores the burgeoning scholarship on women's rights after war, first grappling with war as a period of possibility for building new gender-inclusive institutions. We review efforts in three arenas: increasing women's political representation in postwar democratic transitions; improving access to justice for women through the extension of property rights and bodily autonomy within systems of carceral justice; and integrating women into labor markets and security sectors through various components of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. Yet these inclusionary efforts have too often sought to dismantle one form of oppression (gender inequality) without challenging others. We document how projects to center women in liberal democratic reforms following war inadvertently overlook other manifestations of violence at the core of these institutions.
{"title":"Women's Rights After War: On Gender Interventions and Enduring Hierarchies","authors":"M. Berry, Milli Lake","doi":"10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-113020-085456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-113020-085456","url":null,"abstract":"Postwar recovery efforts foreground gender equality as a key component of building more liberal democracies. This review explores the burgeoning scholarship on women's rights after war, first grappling with war as a period of possibility for building new gender-inclusive institutions. We review efforts in three arenas: increasing women's political representation in postwar democratic transitions; improving access to justice for women through the extension of property rights and bodily autonomy within systems of carceral justice; and integrating women into labor markets and security sectors through various components of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. Yet these inclusionary efforts have too often sought to dismantle one form of oppression (gender inequality) without challenging others. We document how projects to center women in liberal democratic reforms following war inadvertently overlook other manifestations of violence at the core of these institutions.","PeriodicalId":47338,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Law and Social Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44421051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-13DOI: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-021721-072326
Jessica M. Salerno
Judges and jurors are asked to comb through horrific evidence of accidents and crimes when choosing verdicts and punishment. These factfinders are likely to experience and express intense emotions as a result. A review of social, cognitive, moral, and legal psychological science illuminates how experienced and expressed emotions in legal settings can unconsciously bias even the most well-intentioned, diligent factfinder's decision-making processes in prejudicial ways. Experiencing negative emotions creates motivation to blame and punish—instigating blame validation processes to justify guilty/liability verdicts and harsher punishments. The review also examines how emotion expression can impugn legal actors’ credibility when it violates factfinders’ (often unrealistic) expectations for appropriate emotion in legal contexts. It considers misguided and promising interventions to help factfinders regulate emotional responses, advocating limiting emotional evidence as much as possible and, when not possible, helping factfinders reframe how they think about it and remain aware of their potential biases.
{"title":"The Impact of Experienced and Expressed Emotion on Legal Factfinding","authors":"Jessica M. Salerno","doi":"10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-021721-072326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-021721-072326","url":null,"abstract":"Judges and jurors are asked to comb through horrific evidence of accidents and crimes when choosing verdicts and punishment. These factfinders are likely to experience and express intense emotions as a result. A review of social, cognitive, moral, and legal psychological science illuminates how experienced and expressed emotions in legal settings can unconsciously bias even the most well-intentioned, diligent factfinder's decision-making processes in prejudicial ways. Experiencing negative emotions creates motivation to blame and punish—instigating blame validation processes to justify guilty/liability verdicts and harsher punishments. The review also examines how emotion expression can impugn legal actors’ credibility when it violates factfinders’ (often unrealistic) expectations for appropriate emotion in legal contexts. It considers misguided and promising interventions to help factfinders regulate emotional responses, advocating limiting emotional evidence as much as possible and, when not possible, helping factfinders reframe how they think about it and remain aware of their potential biases.","PeriodicalId":47338,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Law and Social Science","volume":"5 1","pages":"181-203"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138509599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-13DOI: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-040721-102430
Jens Meierhenrich
In this article, I use the concept of constitutional dictatorship as a heuristic, as a way of thinking more explicitly about constitutional violence than is customary in comparative constitutional law. Constitutional dictatorship is an epic concept. It is capable of illuminating—and retelling—epic histories of constitutional law, of alerting us to commonalities in constitutional practices of domination—and thus of violence—that would otherwise remain shrouded in legal orientalism. The analysis aspires to make constitutional law strange again. To this end, I trace nomoi and narratives of constitutional dictatorship from colonialism to the coronavirus pandemic. Arguing against emergency scripts, I relate the idea of “emergency” to the everyday and both to coloniality. Mine is a rudimentary conceptual history—a Begriffsgeschichte—of constitutional dictatorship. I think of the empirical vignettes about crisis government in the colony/postcolony on which my comparative historical analysis is based as prolegomena to a critical theory of constitutional dictatorship.
{"title":"Constitutional Dictatorships, from Colonialism to COVID-19","authors":"Jens Meierhenrich","doi":"10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-040721-102430","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-040721-102430","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I use the concept of constitutional dictatorship as a heuristic, as a way of thinking more explicitly about constitutional violence than is customary in comparative constitutional law. Constitutional dictatorship is an epic concept. It is capable of illuminating—and retelling—epic histories of constitutional law, of alerting us to commonalities in constitutional practices of domination—and thus of violence—that would otherwise remain shrouded in legal orientalism. The analysis aspires to make constitutional law strange again. To this end, I trace nomoi and narratives of constitutional dictatorship from colonialism to the coronavirus pandemic. Arguing against emergency scripts, I relate the idea of “emergency” to the everyday and both to coloniality. Mine is a rudimentary conceptual history—a Begriffsgeschichte—of constitutional dictatorship. I think of the empirical vignettes about crisis government in the colony/postcolony on which my comparative historical analysis is based as prolegomena to a critical theory of constitutional dictatorship.","PeriodicalId":47338,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Law and Social Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42022056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}