Joanna Kusiak and Jolyon Maugham chaired Stephen Law

Researcher and scholar-activist Joanna Kusiak and lawyer and founder of governance watchdog Good Law Project Jolyon Maugham discuss how the ordinary citizen can still use the law to fight back.

Our legal systems seem often to be at the disposal only of the wealthy and the powerful. Governments, companies, and billionaires use the law to silence critics and enforce their will. The law, a cynic may suggest, is not for the likes of us. Or is it? Can ordinary people use the law to fight back? Both our panellists both believe the answer is ‘yes’ and have inside knowledge and entertaining tales of how victory can be achieved.

Kusiak is a Cambridge-based researcher and scholar-activist and winner of the $100, 000 Nine Dots Prize and book contract with Cambridge University Press for her provocative response to the question ‘Why has the rule of law become so fragile?’ Her winning essay focused on the case of the 2021 Berlin referendum, in which voters decided to expropriate more than 240,000 properties from corporate landlords into public ownership. Kusiak demonstrates the potential of radically legal politics to deepen our democracies and renew the rule of law.

Maugham is a lawyer, writer, and founder of governance watchdog Good Law Project. At the age of 45 he was described by The Times as ‘one of Britain’s leading barristers’ but a year later began to wind down his practice to start a brand new not for profit. Since its inception in 2017, Good Law Project has become the biggest legal campaigning group in the country, has won some of the leading constitutional cases of our times and set the political agenda around Government pandemic sleaze. Maugham’s latest book is Bringing Down Goliath.

Discussions are chaired by Dr Stephen Law, a philosopher and academic, author of bestselling introductions to philosophy for adults and children, editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy Journal Think, and the festival’s major projects director.