The public role of experts poses a prima facie dilemma for democracy: popular sovereignty or deference to epistemic authority? This issue, which was central in the Dewey-Lippmann debate a century ago, is very much alive, as the current populist attack on expertise demonstrates. The authority of experts had been defended according to a division of labor between facts and values known as “the value-free ideal,” but this ideal has become untenable, renewing the urgency of the question. Contrasting with approaches in philosophy of science that draw on the ideal theories of liberal political philosophy, I propose a non-ideal arrangement that draws on the civic republican tradition, dictatorship of the technocrats, and argue for the democratic legitimacy of this role for scientific experts in a society under conditions like those we currently face.