Bringing together scholars from around the world—particularly the Global South—PAL promotes collaborative, interdisciplinary, and comparative research while fostering dialogue across academic communities, regions, and generations of researchers.
Founded on the conviction that contemporary authoritarianism cannot be understood without taking law seriously, PAL explores how legal institutions, legal ideas, legal professionals, and legal practices can both facilitate and resist autocratization. Through collaborative research, workshops, publications, podcasts, and international partnerships, the network seeks to deepen scholarly understanding of these dynamics while strengthening global sociolegal collaboration.
Today, PAL operates as an International Research Collaborative (IRC) within the Law and Society Association (LSA) and serves as the Association’s inaugural Topical Laboratory under its Global Collaboration Program (GCP).
Our Story
PAL emerged in 2019 from conversations among scholars inspired by Kim Lane Scheppele’s Presidential Address at the Law and Society Association Annual Meeting on “constitutional assassinations.” Building on her influential concept of autocratic legalism (Scheppele, 2018), these discussions explored how law had become central to contemporary processes of democratic erosion—not simply as a constraint on power, but also as a resource for authoritarian governance and, conversely, for democratic resistance.
Recognizing the need for a more comparative and globally inclusive research agenda, scholars from the Global South came together to establish the Project on Autocratic Legalism. From its inception, PAL has sought to bridge regions, disciplines, and methodological traditions in order to better understand how law shapes democratic and authoritarian trajectories across different political and legal contexts.
In 2020, PAL became an International Research Collaborative of the Law and Society Association through the project Autocratic Legalism in Brazil, India, and South Africa (PAL-BISA). Supported by an international research team and an Expert Advisory Committee including Kim Lane Scheppele, David Trubek, Rick Abel, Bojan Bugaric, Helena Alviar, and Siri Gloppen, this first collaborative initiative combined country-specific studies with thematic comparative research, laying the foundations for PAL’s long-term intellectual agenda.
The following year, PAL was selected as the inaugural Topical Laboratory of the Law and Society Association’s Global Collaboration Program (GCP), a pilot initiative designed to expand sociolegal research capacity worldwide. This new phase significantly broadened the network’s activities, leading to new international collaborations, the launch of PALcast, and research on transnational efforts to defend democracy and counter authoritarianism.
Since then, PAL has continued to evolve into a vibrant international community of scholars. Through collaborative research, conferences, workshops, publications, mentoring initiatives, podcasts, and public engagement, the network advances the comparative study of autocratic legalism while fostering intellectual exchange across regions and generations.
What We Do
PAL’s activities are organized around a shared commitment to collaborative and globally engaged sociolegal research. They include:
- Comparative and interdisciplinary research on autocratic legalism, democratic erosion, and democratic resilience.
- International research networks connecting scholars across regions, disciplines, and institutions.
- Workshops, conferences, research laboratories, and collaborative working groups.
- Books, journal articles, edited volumes, policy-oriented publications, and other scholarly outputs.
- PALcast, featuring conversations with leading scholars and practitioners working on democracy, law, and authoritarianism.
- Mentoring and capacity-building initiatives, with particular attention to early-career scholars and researchers from the Global South.
Our Values
PAL is guided by a commitment to:
- rigorous and collaborative scholarship;
- comparative and interdisciplinary inquiry;
- globally inclusive knowledge production;
- methodological pluralism and intellectual openness;
- strengthening sociolegal research capacity across regions;
- fostering dialogue between academic research and public debate.
By connecting scholars across countries and disciplines, PAL seeks not only to advance the study of autocratic legalism but also to contribute to a deeper understanding of the legal foundations of democracy and authoritarianism in the twenty-first century.