nam 22 uu 4500 10.17176/20200626-003815-0 DE-Verfassungsblog cr||||| 200625s2020||||xx#|||||o|||| ||| 0|eng|| 10.17176/20200626-003815-0 doi eng 342 23 Jakab, András Author aut Bringing a Hammer to the Chess Board Why Doctrinal-Conceptual Legal Thinking is Futile in Dealing with Autocratizing Regimes Jakab, András Verfassungsblog 2020-06-25 Text txt rdacontent Computermedien c rdamedia Online-Ressource cr rdacarrier In cases where constitutional law is slowly losing its normative force, sophisticated doctrinal-conceptual systems (Verfassungsdogmatik) may even become ridiculous and, to some degree, dishonest. While showing a very few examples of doctrinal absurdities in a judgment of a captured and subservient constitutional court can be meaningful (also in order to corroborate the claim about its captured nature), writing a thorough doctrinal analysis on such a judgment is a futile, frustrating and meaningless exercise. A thorough doctrinal analysis can even legitimize the theater of legalism by taking seriously words which are not worth to be taken seriously. Judicial decisions of captured courts and doctrinal writings of pro-autocracy academics in these countries can be viewed as merely performative acts (as opposed to reasons). funded by the government CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Authoritarian Populism Autocratization judicial independence Verfassungsdogmatik Max Steinbeis Verfassungsblog gGmbH Verfassungsblog 2366-7044 https://staging.verfassungsblog.de/bringing-a-hammer-to-the-chess-board/ raw object