August 14, 2025. 12 PM EST
The Orban Model: Destroying Democracy by Law
This week we will hear from Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Kim is an expert on constitutional law and will put the American experience in comparative perspective, focusing her discussion on the erosion of democracy in Hungary under Viktor Orban. She will draw on insights from her new book, Destroying Democracy by Law.
Kim Lane Scheppele
Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Princeton University
Meet the Speaker
Kim Lane Scheppele is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. She is also a faculty fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her primary field is the sociology of law and she specializes in ethnographic and archival research on courts and public institutions. She also works in sociological theory, comparative/historical sociology, political sociology, sociology of knowledge and human rights. In 2016, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also an elected member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and serves as a “global jurist” on the executive committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law. She served as the elected president of the Law and Society Association from 2017-2019. Her book, Legal Secrets, won Special Recognition in the Distinguished Scholarly Publication competition of the American Sociological Association as well as the Corwin Prize of the American Political Science Association.
Suggested Readings
TBA