"Will Democracy Die in Darkness? Calling Autocracy by its Name"

The asserted primacy of norms over rules and institutions raises perhaps the greatest challenge for scholars and practitioners of constitutional design. In the midst of the great crisis facing contemporary democracy, in America and globally, is there nothing that the law can do? In this paper, I suggest that with appropriate constitutional anchors, the courts can fuel political support for the same unwritten norms that make the courts effective at all – making the causal arrow run in both directions. To do so, courts must fearlessly call autocracy by its name.