# It Can't Happen Here *A 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis, and a phrase used in scholarly commentary on institutional denial* *It Can't Happen Here* is a 1935 novel by [[Sinclair Lewis]] about an authoritarian demagogue who is elected to the American presidency.[^1] The title has since passed into general use as shorthand for the complacent belief that institutional breakdown happens in other places.[^1][^2] The [[University of Chicago Law School]] has published scholarly commentary that treats the novel as a framework for institutional and historical denial. The commentary appears under the title *'It Can't Happen Here': The Lessons of History*.[^1][^2] ## What The phrase appears in the cited sources in two senses. The first is literary: it is the title of Lewis's 1935 novel, whose plot centers on a demagogue's rise to the presidency.[^1] The second is analytic. Here the phrase names a habit of denial, the assumption that breakdown belongs elsewhere. It is used this way in the Law School's commentary and in a related book chapter in the [[University of Chicago]]'s Chicago Unbound repository.[^1][^2] ## In the at-issue record The project's at-issue catalogue carries one item on this subject, AI-Stearns-043, dated 1935, in the section *The Jurisdiction Gap & the Unrecorded Record Edition*. The item restates the novel's title and the University of Chicago commentary.[^1][^2] It gives a 2026 presidential action establishing a federal task force to eliminate fraud as its anchor, for the category "institutional denial as a named analytic category."[^3] The record does not establish that the order addresses the novel or the phrase.[^3] The item also makes a statement about a county's search for an abducted child. That statement cites no source, so it is omitted here pending verification. ## Notes [^1]: University of Chicago Law School, *'It Can't Happen Here': The Lessons of History* (n.d.) — scholarly commentary on Lewis's 1935 novel and its use as a framework for institutional and historical denial. https://www.law.uchicago.edu/node/64406 [^2]: University of Chicago Law School, Chicago Unbound, *Book chapter no. 1523* (n.d.) — scholarly treatment using the novel's title as a framework for institutional and historical denial. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/book_chapters/1523/ [^3]: The White House, *Establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud* (presidential action, March 2026) — the document listed as the anchor of at-issue item AI-Stearns-043. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/establishing-the-task-force-to-eliminate-fraud/