AN INTRODUCTION: Law & Illiberalism

While the relationship between law and liberalism has been the subject of a rich and detailed literature, the study of law and illiberalism—the subject of this volume—is of relatively recent vintage, born largely of the threats to liberal democracy that the Trump administration posed in the United States. But the United States has not been alone in confronting the dangers of populist authoritarianism. We need but look at Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and Brazil to see that liberal backsliding has turned into a global phenomenon. Not all of this is surprising. Law, after all, need not be liberal, and