Kim Lane Scheppele

Kim Lane Scheppele is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University, where she directs the Program in Law and Normative Thinking at the University Center for Human Values. Scheppele works on topics related to comparative constitutional ethnography within the sociology of law.

She spent several years living in Hungary and Russia doing fieldwork on the creation of new constitutions after the revolutions of 1989. In the post-9/11 era, she became interested in the global impact of anti-terrorism laws on constitutional democracies. Her research on autocracy and democratic backsliding in the 21st century led her to expand upon the concept of autocratic legalism by Javier Corrales. She coined the term "Frankenstate" to describe the kind of governance that emerges from autocratic legalism.

Her book Legal Secrets: Equality and Efficiency in the Common Law (1988) received multiple awards. For her research advancing law and society, she was awarded the Kalven Prize in 2014. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. She is currently recognized as an expert on authoritarian regimes.