A People's Law

Since 2002, there has been intense interest in Ali Fuad Başgil among intellectuals and politicians connected to Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan's increasingly autocratic Justice and Development Party. A regime-loyal professor of constitutional law during the authoritarian one-party period (1923–45), Başgil reinvented himself as a liberal conservative after 1950. Contemporary admirers downplay Başgil's early work, paradoxically citing his postwar liberalism in support of Erdoğan's authoritarianism. This article reassesses Başgil's oeuvre, arguing that his current reception is facilitated by, yet requires ignoring, continuities in his thought. Drawing on Émile Durkheim and Léon Duguit, Başgil argued throughout his career that state law derives its legitimacy from preexisting societal norms, which it is the task of the legal scholar to understand, not to determine. This role understanding placed him at odds with legal scholars who grounded authority in legal-technical expertise, construing themselves as the final arbiters of justice. Başgil's philosophy allowed him to change his substantive ideas from fascist solidarism in the interwar years to liberal conservativism after the war without abandoning his antitechnocratic approach, making him the ideal role model for a regime that builds its identity on populist resentment against the same authoritarian state apparatus it now wields against opponents.