Publication: Authoritarian Constitutionalism

One of the fascinating questions that irked me while I was working on my dissertation was how dictators justified their rule. In the case of Poland, but not just Poland, the authoritarians who took power after the 1926 coup d'etat were obsessed with legality, or at least the appearance of legality. You might say then that they were also obsessed with appearing legitimate. Despite the obviously criminal act of overthrowing the government, everything they did was according to the letter of the law.

A few years after I finished my PhD, I was invited to the University of Jena to join a conference (and then a workshop) on illiberalism. This was part of a larger project. And thanks to their initiative, they helped me improve my work and even invited me to contribute to an edited volume on illiberal constitutions.

The outcome is my latest article that focuses on two legal scholars in particular and how they justified Poland's 1935 authoritarian constitution. The piece appeared in European Law Open, a relatively new journal in the Cambridge Core family. It's available open access.