"How To Lose A Constitutional Democracy"
- Publication: UCLA Law Review
2018, Tom Ginsburg, UCLA Law Review
Authors: Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq
"Is the United States at risk of democratic backsliding? And would the Constitution prevent such decay? To many, the 2016 election campaign and the conduct of newly installed President Donald Trump may be the immediate catalyst for these questions. But structural changes to the socio-economic environment and geopolitical shifts are what make the question a truly pressing one. Eschewing a focus on current events, this Article develops a taxonomy of different threats of democratic backsliding, the mechanisms whereby they unfold, and the comparative risk of each threat in the contemporary moment. By drawing on comparative law and politics experience, we demonstrate that there are two modal paths of democratic decay."
Read the full abstract and access the article here.