Discussions about courts in democratically backsliding and fully autocratic contexts usually focus on two aspects: th eir co-optation and instrumentalization by authoritarian actors\, and their role in defending human rights and the rule of law. The role of courts in providing the intellectual scaffolding of legality to authoritarianism\, or in offering rational justifications for authoritarian transitions\, is\, h owever\, rarely interrogated. This event takes up this overlooked terrain.< /p>
Join us for a lecture-style event with Madhav Khosla for an in-depth exploration of the role of courts in supplying legal reasons that underwrit e transitions away from democracy\, situated within a broader examination o f how law constitutes autocratization and how authoritarian legal orders de velop persuasive justificatory logics.
Madhav Khosla S.J.D. ‘17 is a Visiting Professor at HLS\, and is also a Senior Fellow at the Knight Fi rst Amendment Institute at Columbia University\, a member of the Columbia U niversity Committee on Global Thought\, and the Faculty Director of the B.R . Ambedkar Program in Global Constitutionalism at Columbia Law School\, whi ch hosts the Ambedkar Law Lectures. Khosla is interested in the nature and form of constitutions\, especially from a comparative and theoretical persp ective. Much of his research and writing in comparative constitutional law has focused on South Asia and India. Khosla studied political theory at Har vard University\, where his dissertation was awarded the Edward M. Chase Pr ize for “the best dissertation on a subject relating to the promotion of wo rld peace”\, and law at Yale Law School and the National Law School of Indi a University\, Bangalore.
CATEGORIES:Speaker/Panel LOCATION:Hauser Hall\; 102 Malkin Classroom GEO:0;0 ORGANIZER;CN="Valenia Bergier":MAILTO:vbergier@law.harvard.edu URL;VALUE=URI:https://hls.harvard.edu/events/courting-authoritarianism-a-co mparative-perspective/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://hls.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Untitled-2-3.jpeg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 DTSTART:20260308T070000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR