CONFERENCES & EVENTS

Is Rule of Law Enough to Protect Democracy?

March 27, 2025
7:30 p.m.–9:00 p.m. ET
WEBINAR

RSVP FOR THE ZOOM WEBINAR >

Panelists Kim Lane Scheppele, Aziz Z. Huq, and Susan Herman will discuss rule of law and offer ways to secure its viability and foster democracy. This event is organized by the Network for Responsible Public Policy.

SPEAKERS

KIM LANE SCHEPPELE is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs and Director of the Program in Law and Normative Thinking at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.  Her research focuses on backsliding democracies around the world, documenting how aspirational autocrats have been elected to high office and then used their legal powers to undermine democratic institutions.   With experience living in and tracing the destruction of democracy first in Russia and then in Hungary, Scheppele warns that there are now signs of danger in the United States. Her book on this subject, Destroying (and Restoring) Democracy by Law, is forthcoming from Harvard University Press.  An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Scheppele received the 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship in constitutional studies.

AZIZ Z. HUQ is a scholar of U.S. and comparative constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He has worked on topics ranging from democratic backsliding to regulating AI. His scholarly work is published in several books and leading law reviews, social science, and political science journals. He has also written for numerous publications including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Dissent, and The Nation. He currently serves on the board of the American Constitution Society, the New Press, and the ACLU of Illinois. Before joining the Law School, he worked as counsel and then director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Project, Senior Consultant Analyst for the International Crisis Group, and as a law clerk for Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

MODERATOR

SUSAN HERMAN is the inaugural Ruth Bader Ginsburg Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. Like Ginsburg, she served as General Counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union. In October 2008, Herman was elected as the seventh President of the ACLU, a position she held until stepping down in January 2021. She teaches courses in Constitutional Law and Criminal Procedure, and seminars including Terrorism and Civil Liberties, Law and Literature, COVID-19 and the Constitution, and Current Issues in Constitutional Law.

EVENT CO-SPONSORS

Network for Responsible Public Policy
The Academy of Political Science
The Puffin Foundation