Legal gaslighting

Abstract

Suppose that an authoritarian regime wants to make changes to legal norms or institutions to consolidate its hold on political power. Suppose further that the regime in question cannot simply ignore the domestic or international costs of doing so, and that it has an interest in responding to critiques of these changes based on liberal democratic norms and the rule of law. How can it do so? One possible approach is to sow confusion and undermine the normative standards themselves – in effect, to ‘gaslight’ the domestic or international audience (or both). To that end, a regime might assert that the change it proposes resembles a ‘best practice’ from one or more other jurisdictions. Such emulation need not be thorough, or even sincere; it may suffice simply to assert that a proposed change resembles that in a jurisdiction with ironclad rule-of-law credentials. The changes being adopted may bear no real resemblance to the ‘comparators’ on closer examination. Alternatively, the measures being adopted may be similar on their face, but operate in such a different context that they end up serving a very different function to the function they perform in the comparator jurisdiction. Such gaslighting need not succeed in deceiving outsiders or subjects; undermining the standards by which legal reforms are measured, sowing confusion, or providing a superficial pretext for inaction may be sufficient.