Kim is an American socio-legal scholar globally recognized for coining the concepts of “autocratic legalism” and the “Frankenstate”. She serves as the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at the Princeton University Department of Sociology, with joint appointments in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values, alongside a faculty fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago.
Following the 1989 revolutions, Scheppele lived in Hungary and Russia for extended periods, conducting foundational ethnographic and archival research on emerging post-communist constitutional systems. Her core scholarship explains how democratically elected leaders systematically dismantle liberal democratic guardrails from within by weaponizing formal legal instruments and constitutional amendments. This analytical framework demonstrates how modern autocrats maintain a superficial veneer of legality while subverting judicial independence and institutional checks and balances.
Kim has served as president of the Law and Society Association profile via Wikipedia and received its Kalven Prize for influential socio-legal scholarship. Her extensive publications track democratic backsliding, post-9/11 anti-terrorism legislation, and the European Union’s rule-of-law enforcement challenges. Her recent research and forthcoming works, including Destroying Democracy by Law, investigate the legal blueprints utilized by illiberal regimes to institutionalize power, offering critical frameworks for understanding contemporary democratic decay and prospective institutional recovery.