Rate My Professor Kim Lane Scheppele

Kim Lane Scheppele is a faculty fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where she previously served for nearly a decade as the John J. O’Brien Professor of Comparative Law and Professor of Sociology from 1996 to 2005. She earned her A.B. in urban studies from Barnard College in 1975, followed by an M.A. in sociology in 1977 and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1985. Scheppele began her academic career at the University of Michigan from 1984 to 1996, holding positions including Arthur F. Thurnau Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, with adjunct appointments in law and the Institute of Public Policy Studies. Her research concentrates on comparative constitutional law, utilizing ethnographic, historical, and doctrinal methods to examine the emergence and collapse of constitutional systems. Following the 1989 revolutions, she focused on post-communist transformations in Eastern Europe, conducting extended fieldwork in Hungary and Russia to study constitutional courts and public engagement with new constitutions. Post-9/11, her work addressed the effects of anti-terrorism laws on constitutional governance, and more recently, she has analyzed democratic backsliding through autocratic legalism, particularly within the European Union context including Brexit and illiberal regimes.

Since 2005, Scheppele has been the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University in the School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values, where she directed the Program in Law and Public Affairs. Key publications include her book Legal Secrets: Equality and Efficiency in the Common Law (University of Chicago Press, 1988), which earned the Corwin Prize from the American Political Science Association and Special Recognition from the American Sociological Association; “Guardians of the Constitution: Constitutional Court Presidents and the Struggle for the Rule of Law in Post-Soviet Europe,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review (2006); and “Autocratic Legalism,” University of Chicago Law Review (2018). She received the Harry J. Kalven Prize from the Law and Society Association in 2014 for influential socio-legal scholarship, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016, and served as president of the Law and Society Association from 2017 to 2019. Additional honors include the Robert A. Gorman Teaching Award for excellence in teaching at University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2002 and multiple National Science Foundation grants for research on constitutionalism.