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Bringing Down Goliath: How Good Law Can Topple the Powerful
All too often our legal system feels like it only works for people who already have power and privilege, who know how to use the courts to enforce their will and defend their interests.
Jolyon Maugham QC founded The Good Law Project with the belief that the law can also put power in the hands of ordinary people. It has brought a series of landmark cases against a dishonest and increasingly autocratic government and won widespread acclaim in successfully reversing the Prime Minister's unlawful suspension of Parliament. It is now the largest legal campaign group on the UK and has won some of the most important constitutional cases in recent memory. In this empowering book, Jolyon Maugham reveals what has driven his inspiration and purpose, and offers a bold new vision for how the law can work better for all of us in the fight against injustice.
Jolyon Maugham QC founded The Good Law Project with the belief that the law can also put power in the hands of ordinary people. It has brought a series of landmark cases against a dishonest and increasingly autocratic government and won widespread acclaim in successfully reversing the Prime Minister's unlawful suspension of Parliament. It is now the largest legal campaign group on the UK and has won some of the most important constitutional cases in recent memory. In this empowering book, Jolyon Maugham reveals what has driven his inspiration and purpose, and offers a bold new vision for how the law can work better for all of us in the fight against injustice.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published April 27, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
May 6, 2023
A really important book shedding light on some of the major legal and constitutional issues we as a country face at the moment. Would highly recommend anyone with the vaguest interest in politics or the legal system to give this a read.
May 9, 2023
A curious mixture between biography and legal theory, this suffers mainly from vanity.
Here's something I'm rather conscious of. Accusing someone of being smug, or sensitive, or vain is a very easy thing to do. Those types of insults are very difficult to disprove because any effort to disprove it will own further your association with that characteristic. So when I use it to describe Jolyon Maugham KC's book, I mean for it to be a challengeable position, which ought to be playing out in the readers mind.
Bringing Down Goliath principally suffers because it draws exclusively on case law and legal work within which the author has been directly involved. It means that the body of cases upon which the author can make his arguments are limited, and this is a book attempting to make broad statements about the way the UK legal system functions. And it is commenting on some serious matters, which deserve the attention. But offering attention to such issues with a single spotlight, is like the RSC putting on Hamlet with only one actor. It works, but it lacks the depth and feels needlessly pretentious.
That said, the arguments Maugham makes here are very solid. He has an excellent discussion on the origins of the Brexit referendum. His insight into the Uber business model is insightful, nuanced and draws effectively on his own expertise. There is a superb tackling of the way in which Judges are selected and their place in the British constitution. Most importantly, his passion and pride in his work and his colleagues shines through. For anyone interested in tactical, political, litigation, this is a good spot to start from.
Ultimately, if you're interested in Maugham's work this is worth checking out. His personal moments are particularly interesting, and it has enough good theory going on that the limited bases are easy to sidestep.
Here's something I'm rather conscious of. Accusing someone of being smug, or sensitive, or vain is a very easy thing to do. Those types of insults are very difficult to disprove because any effort to disprove it will own further your association with that characteristic. So when I use it to describe Jolyon Maugham KC's book, I mean for it to be a challengeable position, which ought to be playing out in the readers mind.
Bringing Down Goliath principally suffers because it draws exclusively on case law and legal work within which the author has been directly involved. It means that the body of cases upon which the author can make his arguments are limited, and this is a book attempting to make broad statements about the way the UK legal system functions. And it is commenting on some serious matters, which deserve the attention. But offering attention to such issues with a single spotlight, is like the RSC putting on Hamlet with only one actor. It works, but it lacks the depth and feels needlessly pretentious.
That said, the arguments Maugham makes here are very solid. He has an excellent discussion on the origins of the Brexit referendum. His insight into the Uber business model is insightful, nuanced and draws effectively on his own expertise. There is a superb tackling of the way in which Judges are selected and their place in the British constitution. Most importantly, his passion and pride in his work and his colleagues shines through. For anyone interested in tactical, political, litigation, this is a good spot to start from.
Ultimately, if you're interested in Maugham's work this is worth checking out. His personal moments are particularly interesting, and it has enough good theory going on that the limited bases are easy to sidestep.
May 29, 2024
Review to follow
September 27, 2023
Excellent book.
Unsure of the poor reviews this book has received; unwarranted and unfair. However, I think I can put forward a possible reason for this.
The political landscape is increasingly polarised, almost tribal. This book covers one arm of the state (The law) challenging the legislator ( the incumbent government). Today, challenging or holding to account the government doesn’t give rise to debate, it entrenches people’s beliefs. Often, these are based on nothing more than holding faith and facts in the same regard. If you like or see your identity in the reflection of this government then you will not like the challenge this book documents.
Viewed with an open mind, this book is not political but does cover politics and holds it to account using the rule of law. Discovering and proving that a government has acted illegally is shocking but to discover that there are little to no consequences is another level.
This book highlights significant failings and potential widespread corruption. It shows how the law can prove and challenge but is failing to hold to account. However, as argued in this book, it is beyond its reach or remit.
Interesting book, interesting character and vital work being done by the Good Law Project.
Unsure of the poor reviews this book has received; unwarranted and unfair. However, I think I can put forward a possible reason for this.
The political landscape is increasingly polarised, almost tribal. This book covers one arm of the state (The law) challenging the legislator ( the incumbent government). Today, challenging or holding to account the government doesn’t give rise to debate, it entrenches people’s beliefs. Often, these are based on nothing more than holding faith and facts in the same regard. If you like or see your identity in the reflection of this government then you will not like the challenge this book documents.
Viewed with an open mind, this book is not political but does cover politics and holds it to account using the rule of law. Discovering and proving that a government has acted illegally is shocking but to discover that there are little to no consequences is another level.
This book highlights significant failings and potential widespread corruption. It shows how the law can prove and challenge but is failing to hold to account. However, as argued in this book, it is beyond its reach or remit.
Interesting book, interesting character and vital work being done by the Good Law Project.
May 27, 2024
I really enjoyed "Bringing Down Goliath" by Jolyon Maugham. It was a great book, and I was particularly interested in the part about our ridiculous defamation laws. Defamation laws mean that threats of libel can be used to silence criticism, even when it is important and in the public interest. Even when criticism is demonstrably true, the critic may feel forced to withdraw their comments. If they lose, they can't pay their opponents' costs, or even their own.
Defamation is also used by rapists to silence victims. The Good Law Project is one of the few things standing between us and fascism, and it is funded by all people. It is well worth a read and Good Law Project is worth supporting.
Defamation is also used by rapists to silence victims. The Good Law Project is one of the few things standing between us and fascism, and it is funded by all people. It is well worth a read and Good Law Project is worth supporting.
April 27, 2023
Funniest book since “Wilt” series by Tom Sharpe.
August 29, 2024
4/5 stars.
Overall:
* I am personally aligned with Maugham's view the law: that it is problematic, but it can be a tool for good. I appreciate that he is deeply critical of the law, but retains that optimism and determination.
"Of course, that’s not a criticism of the law – some things are beyond all who are mortal – but it is still useful to bear in mind as you contemplate what the law can do, and the terrain in which it is most comfortable."
"Creating a framework through which you and I might compel the mightiest in the land is the law’s great achievement. Governments may be captured by the interests of powerful global corporations but they remain subject to the law, just like you and I, and are compellable, just like you and I. That we are all equal before the law and subject to it is the law’s great boast. It is the high-water mark of our universal human desire that life be fair. All of this is true. But the law cannot operate fairly without lawyers. And lawyers are expensive – hundreds or sometimes even thousands of pounds an hour – and they are only rarely available to those without immense wealth. In most spheres, legal aid, like the dodo, can only be seen in books. Draw back the curtain of rhetoric and you reveal a reality that is sometimes not merely empty of substance but worse."
"But the problem -- that they view the world exclusively through the lens of politics -- is also an opportunity for those who grasp the power of the law to help deliver political accountability."
* I liked also that Maugham shows a glimpse to his emotional maturity.
"I have put down the anger. But I hold on to the pain and it is a flame I fuel because it powers me to take up arms for others. Whose lives have not been as blessed as mine is. Whose pleas for better are unheard. This is a choice. As bell hooks wrote in All About Love: ‘What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.’"
"The impulse, to respond to a world that is wanting, to feel some degree of control over our lives, to be more than passengers on a coach trip we never signed up for, you might describe as agency. What might we do if we got it?"
The good:
* Maugham has good insights into legal ethics or ethics in legal education:
"You begin by being trained to understand that law is different from good, and your job is to apply the law. But as you practise the law you lose interest in what is good. Many, many lawyers take a dangerous step further and come to believe that because it is the law it is good."
* Maugham reflects poignantly on his privilege and the privilege of many lawyers. That said, his privilege is evident throughout the book and I was surprised by how many "contacts" he had, especially within the government. In that sense, I can imagine how less self-aware peers can be truly and deeply entrenched in the system.
"I did have some sense that going to university and becoming a barrister and living in central London had shaped – perhaps it would be more accurate to say ‘distorted’ – how I looked at the world."
"The conceptions you have about how the world works if you are one of its winners – more particularly the misconception that your experience is universal – are not easily unlearned. They are deeply rooted, the internal reflection of what manifests outwardly as privilege.
But, as I learned, they are inimical to understanding how the world works for those whose experiences are different.
* I enjoyed his views into politics.
"The real sanction for a breach of public law is a political one. It should hurt a government politically for a judge to declare that a minister has broken the law. The notional right-thinking citizen who casts her vote at the ballot box every five years should weigh in her mind, along with everything else, whether the Government treats itself as restrained by or above the law – and perhaps for the moment she does. But public anger at lawbreaking is not a currency with a fixed value. Presence makes the heart go wander. Eventually voters get bored."
"The fact that a legal decision has political consequences – which would have been true whatever the outcome – doesn’t mean that judges are overstepping. All exercises of judicial review have political consequences.
Politicians get to choose how close to the legal line they sail. They can adopt a conservative position – being careful not to act unlawfully – or they can throw the dice and take their chances. Judges don’t have that choice."
"About one in twenty or one in twenty-five judicial reviews that are launched succeed in court – those at least were the figures in the last half-dozen or so years up to and including 2020. In 2021, after a period of sustained attack on what was asserted by right-wing think tanks to be over-reach by judges, the equivalent figure slumped to one in fifty. The last 20 years have also seen a change in the outcome of cases reaching a final hearing from the claimant being more likely to win to the defendant being more likely to win." --> similar sentiment to Connor Gearty's https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n...
"Even the idea that it is right for judges to resist ministerial pressure is contested. I was told by a senior legal source of a prominent Court of Appeal judge who had said privately that claimants will lose a lot of cases because judges need to conserve their power in case of another ‘prorogation-type’ event (a direct attack on democracy)." --> similar ideas expressed in Julius Yam's article which I cited in my dissertation https://www.cambridge.org/core/journa...
"There's only been one moment in my life where I have looked into the void -- and understood how fascism arrives ... With few exceptions the media reacted with applause or equivocation. A media that had 'both-sided' the prorogation, 'balanced' voices who recognised it for what it was with those who sought to justify it, would not condemn any act, be it autocratic, authoritarian, fascistic."
* I agreed with his views on the judiciary, especially about diversity in terms of outcome rather than in appearance.
"Because we as lawyers talk all the time about the importance of having a diverse judiciary. We do that because we recognise, at some level, that the law is a human instrument. Once you recognise that diversity is important because the law is a human instrument, you necessarily logically have also to recognise that judges bring their own biases to decision-making."
"What is true for lawyers as a class is even more clearly true of those who think they might like to become judges. You can’t be a judge on issues where you have taken a public position – and it’s not even desirable to be understood privately within the profession to have a ‘view’ on particular issues. So those who had a tongue to start with – already a subset – and mean to get on, learn to bite it. And, over time, what began as a sensible piece of careerist positioning becomes innate."
"Standing back, our impression of the legitimacy of the rule of law and the judiciary who administer it is outcome-driven, not form-driven. What we say is that the lack of judicial diversity matters because it gives a false impression of what our judiciary does. But the truth is that the lack of judicial diversity matters because the homogeneity of our judiciary gives a true impression of what our judiciary does. The judiciary is homogenous and the ‘justice’ it hands down reflects its homogeneity. Judges overwhelmingly drawn from narrow strata of social experience – and who mix in judicial circles with others like them – will reflect that experience in their judging."
"This stuff matters, profoundly. Justice isn’t a science – and it is foolish to pretend that it is. What we should want from our judges is humanity, a readiness to hear constructive challenge and a willingness to be thoughtful about what it means that they are made of the same crooked timber of humanity as the people they judge. It’s that combination of qualities that is most likely to site them in the desired quartile of a grid whose vague axes are ‘rules-based’ and ‘fair’. Most judges, I think, have these muscles, but they atrophy unless they are exercised in the fresh air of public debate."
* I felt that his writing was compelling and powerful in certain parts.
"Another question: why is public confidence in the rule of law given an elevated importance? For sure, it has value, but is it more important than the law working properly and fairly? And if a thing is broken, or damaged, is it right to encourage people to have confidence in it?
How is it that you really ensure confidence in judges and the law? Do you do it by protecting them from criticism? Or do you do it through interrogation? Most lawyers, if asked to comment on any other feature of society, would say that the best way to keep things honest, and functioning properly, is through scrutiny, to interrogate whether things are actually working.
If that is right of everything else, why should it not also be true of justice and judges? There is a powerful professional omerta against speaking of these things in the name of ‘preserving public confidence in the judiciary’ – but whose outcome is corrosive of public confidence in the judiciary as discussion of its failings is silenced.
Perhaps Hilary Mantel was right when she wrote that ‘the law is not an instrument to find out truth. It is there to create a fiction that will help us move past atrocious acts and face our future.’ But for it to do even that job requires that we constantly press against and interrogate who is within that ‘us’."
"The victory in the Supreme Court compelled Parliament, at a moment when the referendum result was still fresh, before the sunlit uplands with no conceivable downside of Brexit were exposed as a mirage, to translate the political mandate of a flawed advisory referendum into a legal mandate." (his criticism of the Brexit case)
"I know women who have been raped or sexually assaulted and, having failed to persuade the police to prosecute, have then named their rapist for a semblance of justice. They have then been sued for defamation and, unable to pay lawyers, have felt obliged to publicly resile from the truth and apologise to their rapist. Indeed, Good Law Project, which is financially stronger now than it was then, is currently providing financial backing to a woman who was sexually assaulted and is, in the time of writing, being sued by her abuser.
Once you appreciate that access to justice is about more than rights that everyday people cannot afford to assert, you begin to grasp how the law can become a wicked thing. What was once the subordination of the weak by physical force becomes instead the subordination of the poor by financial force. Our criminal law system punishes the former -- and our civil law system encourages the latter."
"Our judges cannot create law which is resilient against a rampaging executive by interpreting a written constitution as, almost uniquely amongst democracies, the United Kingdom has no written constitution. Indeed, we barely have a constitution at all. We might think we know what is and isn't cricket -- but in a winner-takes-all world you need a rulebook. And the United Kingdom today is that vigorous world -- with a simple majority in the House of Commons a government can overturn anything judges might do. And we have no -- literally no -- human rights protections that are entrenched and cannot be removed."
* It was interesting to see the respect and trust in the professionalism amongst barristers, but also how defensive they are of the institution (other than Maugham of course).
"It occupied over an hour but I knew our application had failed as soon as David Johnston QC, the brilliant advocate the Government had instructed, stood up and said simply that he had read the unredacted documents and the words that were redacted were not relevant to the issues.
The judges believed him and I believed him too.
It’s an extraordinary thing to be able to say this of such a high-stakes piece of litigation. That I can reflects the fact that we have, for the most part in the United Kingdom, an exceptional profession. Even where we are opponents, we often find it within ourselves to be guardians of values dearer to us than self-interest. That I immediately believed him made me very proud."
"But there was an even better reason, actually, to have adopted this stance. It’s best expressed by the old line that ‘It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.’ Would it really matter if other would-be claimants in the case we wanted to bring about Article 50 took the results of the work we had done and used it to make their case better?
It’s not an easy motto to live by – getting credit for stuff is one of the ways in which we pay the bills – but in a world in which the problems are ever larger and feel more and more intractable there is a need for civil society to pull together."
* I liked the last chapter of the book where he sets out quite bold and innovative ideas for the Good Law Project, and a well-written call out.
"Local politics, freed from the deadening ideological hand that steers much national media, can be more volatile and, thus, riskier for incumbent power. And, of course, it's incumbent power, and its abuses that our litigation challenges."
"The lives of each of us are different. We all have different constraints. I was lucky to be self-employed and with some financial freedom. But still, I tell this story because it is emblematic of how too much of the world works. People think they want things to be better -- but the lack the inclination to take even small risks to bring that change about. It is in the accumulation of acts of turning away, of refusing to take personal responsibility, that we create the conditions for bad things to happen and for the world to get worst. ... 'The world is in a bad state,' said Viktor Frankl, 'but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.'"
* Miscellaneous parts of the book that I liked:
"Nick Barber, a professor of Constitutional Law and Theory at the University of Oxford, recently suggested exactly this: I think our role should be to make the judges’ life miserable. For most non-academic lawyers it is problematic to criticise judges because they might appear before them next week. So I think I would encourage academic lawyers to be more critical of judges and more willing to stand up and examine judicial reasoning on behalf of a public that perhaps lacks the skills to do that. We should act as the bridge between the public and the judges, and we should be willing to be critical of the judges when we’re undertaking that task. The danger of the judiciary appeasing the Government is, of course, that it relieves them from the political consequences of their law-breaking. In the long run, because of our notion of Parliamentary supremacy, the only protection for judges from a marauding Executive is political."
"'I have the greatest respect for our judiciary and the rule of law in this country,' wrote Rishi Sunak, before proceeding to threaten a new measure which he would 'activate in the event of judicial recidivism'. You can threaten judges who find against you or you can claim respect for the rule of law, but you can't do both. That press release sent out by Rishi Sunak during his leadership campaign, which mentioned me by name ten times, led to a further series of toxic attacks in national newspapers -- one branding me 'Public Enemy Number One'." This reminds me of HK where pro-Beijing newspapers would name certain politicians, which served as an early warning of their arrest.
The not so good:
* The latter chapters felt less tight and occasionally I was not sure what Maugham's point was.
* The nature of the book meant that it is quite self-absorbed, and can give the impression of self-congratulatory, to the Good Law Project.
* The book seems to sit on the fence between written for lawyers/academics and written for the public, which is fair enough. But, I was left wanting about both more facts and legal details, but also insight into strategic campaigning/litigation. Except for the PPE chapter where I was thrown a bunch of figures and that felt dense to me, but many because I'm not a numbers person.
Overall:
* I am personally aligned with Maugham's view the law: that it is problematic, but it can be a tool for good. I appreciate that he is deeply critical of the law, but retains that optimism and determination.
"Of course, that’s not a criticism of the law – some things are beyond all who are mortal – but it is still useful to bear in mind as you contemplate what the law can do, and the terrain in which it is most comfortable."
"Creating a framework through which you and I might compel the mightiest in the land is the law’s great achievement. Governments may be captured by the interests of powerful global corporations but they remain subject to the law, just like you and I, and are compellable, just like you and I. That we are all equal before the law and subject to it is the law’s great boast. It is the high-water mark of our universal human desire that life be fair. All of this is true. But the law cannot operate fairly without lawyers. And lawyers are expensive – hundreds or sometimes even thousands of pounds an hour – and they are only rarely available to those without immense wealth. In most spheres, legal aid, like the dodo, can only be seen in books. Draw back the curtain of rhetoric and you reveal a reality that is sometimes not merely empty of substance but worse."
"But the problem -- that they view the world exclusively through the lens of politics -- is also an opportunity for those who grasp the power of the law to help deliver political accountability."
* I liked also that Maugham shows a glimpse to his emotional maturity.
"I have put down the anger. But I hold on to the pain and it is a flame I fuel because it powers me to take up arms for others. Whose lives have not been as blessed as mine is. Whose pleas for better are unheard. This is a choice. As bell hooks wrote in All About Love: ‘What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.’"
"The impulse, to respond to a world that is wanting, to feel some degree of control over our lives, to be more than passengers on a coach trip we never signed up for, you might describe as agency. What might we do if we got it?"
The good:
* Maugham has good insights into legal ethics or ethics in legal education:
"You begin by being trained to understand that law is different from good, and your job is to apply the law. But as you practise the law you lose interest in what is good. Many, many lawyers take a dangerous step further and come to believe that because it is the law it is good."
* Maugham reflects poignantly on his privilege and the privilege of many lawyers. That said, his privilege is evident throughout the book and I was surprised by how many "contacts" he had, especially within the government. In that sense, I can imagine how less self-aware peers can be truly and deeply entrenched in the system.
"I did have some sense that going to university and becoming a barrister and living in central London had shaped – perhaps it would be more accurate to say ‘distorted’ – how I looked at the world."
"The conceptions you have about how the world works if you are one of its winners – more particularly the misconception that your experience is universal – are not easily unlearned. They are deeply rooted, the internal reflection of what manifests outwardly as privilege.
But, as I learned, they are inimical to understanding how the world works for those whose experiences are different.
* I enjoyed his views into politics.
"The real sanction for a breach of public law is a political one. It should hurt a government politically for a judge to declare that a minister has broken the law. The notional right-thinking citizen who casts her vote at the ballot box every five years should weigh in her mind, along with everything else, whether the Government treats itself as restrained by or above the law – and perhaps for the moment she does. But public anger at lawbreaking is not a currency with a fixed value. Presence makes the heart go wander. Eventually voters get bored."
"The fact that a legal decision has political consequences – which would have been true whatever the outcome – doesn’t mean that judges are overstepping. All exercises of judicial review have political consequences.
Politicians get to choose how close to the legal line they sail. They can adopt a conservative position – being careful not to act unlawfully – or they can throw the dice and take their chances. Judges don’t have that choice."
"About one in twenty or one in twenty-five judicial reviews that are launched succeed in court – those at least were the figures in the last half-dozen or so years up to and including 2020. In 2021, after a period of sustained attack on what was asserted by right-wing think tanks to be over-reach by judges, the equivalent figure slumped to one in fifty. The last 20 years have also seen a change in the outcome of cases reaching a final hearing from the claimant being more likely to win to the defendant being more likely to win." --> similar sentiment to Connor Gearty's https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n...
"Even the idea that it is right for judges to resist ministerial pressure is contested. I was told by a senior legal source of a prominent Court of Appeal judge who had said privately that claimants will lose a lot of cases because judges need to conserve their power in case of another ‘prorogation-type’ event (a direct attack on democracy)." --> similar ideas expressed in Julius Yam's article which I cited in my dissertation https://www.cambridge.org/core/journa...
"There's only been one moment in my life where I have looked into the void -- and understood how fascism arrives ... With few exceptions the media reacted with applause or equivocation. A media that had 'both-sided' the prorogation, 'balanced' voices who recognised it for what it was with those who sought to justify it, would not condemn any act, be it autocratic, authoritarian, fascistic."
* I agreed with his views on the judiciary, especially about diversity in terms of outcome rather than in appearance.
"Because we as lawyers talk all the time about the importance of having a diverse judiciary. We do that because we recognise, at some level, that the law is a human instrument. Once you recognise that diversity is important because the law is a human instrument, you necessarily logically have also to recognise that judges bring their own biases to decision-making."
"What is true for lawyers as a class is even more clearly true of those who think they might like to become judges. You can’t be a judge on issues where you have taken a public position – and it’s not even desirable to be understood privately within the profession to have a ‘view’ on particular issues. So those who had a tongue to start with – already a subset – and mean to get on, learn to bite it. And, over time, what began as a sensible piece of careerist positioning becomes innate."
"Standing back, our impression of the legitimacy of the rule of law and the judiciary who administer it is outcome-driven, not form-driven. What we say is that the lack of judicial diversity matters because it gives a false impression of what our judiciary does. But the truth is that the lack of judicial diversity matters because the homogeneity of our judiciary gives a true impression of what our judiciary does. The judiciary is homogenous and the ‘justice’ it hands down reflects its homogeneity. Judges overwhelmingly drawn from narrow strata of social experience – and who mix in judicial circles with others like them – will reflect that experience in their judging."
"This stuff matters, profoundly. Justice isn’t a science – and it is foolish to pretend that it is. What we should want from our judges is humanity, a readiness to hear constructive challenge and a willingness to be thoughtful about what it means that they are made of the same crooked timber of humanity as the people they judge. It’s that combination of qualities that is most likely to site them in the desired quartile of a grid whose vague axes are ‘rules-based’ and ‘fair’. Most judges, I think, have these muscles, but they atrophy unless they are exercised in the fresh air of public debate."
* I felt that his writing was compelling and powerful in certain parts.
"Another question: why is public confidence in the rule of law given an elevated importance? For sure, it has value, but is it more important than the law working properly and fairly? And if a thing is broken, or damaged, is it right to encourage people to have confidence in it?
How is it that you really ensure confidence in judges and the law? Do you do it by protecting them from criticism? Or do you do it through interrogation? Most lawyers, if asked to comment on any other feature of society, would say that the best way to keep things honest, and functioning properly, is through scrutiny, to interrogate whether things are actually working.
If that is right of everything else, why should it not also be true of justice and judges? There is a powerful professional omerta against speaking of these things in the name of ‘preserving public confidence in the judiciary’ – but whose outcome is corrosive of public confidence in the judiciary as discussion of its failings is silenced.
Perhaps Hilary Mantel was right when she wrote that ‘the law is not an instrument to find out truth. It is there to create a fiction that will help us move past atrocious acts and face our future.’ But for it to do even that job requires that we constantly press against and interrogate who is within that ‘us’."
"The victory in the Supreme Court compelled Parliament, at a moment when the referendum result was still fresh, before the sunlit uplands with no conceivable downside of Brexit were exposed as a mirage, to translate the political mandate of a flawed advisory referendum into a legal mandate." (his criticism of the Brexit case)
"I know women who have been raped or sexually assaulted and, having failed to persuade the police to prosecute, have then named their rapist for a semblance of justice. They have then been sued for defamation and, unable to pay lawyers, have felt obliged to publicly resile from the truth and apologise to their rapist. Indeed, Good Law Project, which is financially stronger now than it was then, is currently providing financial backing to a woman who was sexually assaulted and is, in the time of writing, being sued by her abuser.
Once you appreciate that access to justice is about more than rights that everyday people cannot afford to assert, you begin to grasp how the law can become a wicked thing. What was once the subordination of the weak by physical force becomes instead the subordination of the poor by financial force. Our criminal law system punishes the former -- and our civil law system encourages the latter."
"Our judges cannot create law which is resilient against a rampaging executive by interpreting a written constitution as, almost uniquely amongst democracies, the United Kingdom has no written constitution. Indeed, we barely have a constitution at all. We might think we know what is and isn't cricket -- but in a winner-takes-all world you need a rulebook. And the United Kingdom today is that vigorous world -- with a simple majority in the House of Commons a government can overturn anything judges might do. And we have no -- literally no -- human rights protections that are entrenched and cannot be removed."
* It was interesting to see the respect and trust in the professionalism amongst barristers, but also how defensive they are of the institution (other than Maugham of course).
"It occupied over an hour but I knew our application had failed as soon as David Johnston QC, the brilliant advocate the Government had instructed, stood up and said simply that he had read the unredacted documents and the words that were redacted were not relevant to the issues.
The judges believed him and I believed him too.
It’s an extraordinary thing to be able to say this of such a high-stakes piece of litigation. That I can reflects the fact that we have, for the most part in the United Kingdom, an exceptional profession. Even where we are opponents, we often find it within ourselves to be guardians of values dearer to us than self-interest. That I immediately believed him made me very proud."
"But there was an even better reason, actually, to have adopted this stance. It’s best expressed by the old line that ‘It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.’ Would it really matter if other would-be claimants in the case we wanted to bring about Article 50 took the results of the work we had done and used it to make their case better?
It’s not an easy motto to live by – getting credit for stuff is one of the ways in which we pay the bills – but in a world in which the problems are ever larger and feel more and more intractable there is a need for civil society to pull together."
* I liked the last chapter of the book where he sets out quite bold and innovative ideas for the Good Law Project, and a well-written call out.
"Local politics, freed from the deadening ideological hand that steers much national media, can be more volatile and, thus, riskier for incumbent power. And, of course, it's incumbent power, and its abuses that our litigation challenges."
"The lives of each of us are different. We all have different constraints. I was lucky to be self-employed and with some financial freedom. But still, I tell this story because it is emblematic of how too much of the world works. People think they want things to be better -- but the lack the inclination to take even small risks to bring that change about. It is in the accumulation of acts of turning away, of refusing to take personal responsibility, that we create the conditions for bad things to happen and for the world to get worst. ... 'The world is in a bad state,' said Viktor Frankl, 'but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.'"
* Miscellaneous parts of the book that I liked:
"Nick Barber, a professor of Constitutional Law and Theory at the University of Oxford, recently suggested exactly this: I think our role should be to make the judges’ life miserable. For most non-academic lawyers it is problematic to criticise judges because they might appear before them next week. So I think I would encourage academic lawyers to be more critical of judges and more willing to stand up and examine judicial reasoning on behalf of a public that perhaps lacks the skills to do that. We should act as the bridge between the public and the judges, and we should be willing to be critical of the judges when we’re undertaking that task. The danger of the judiciary appeasing the Government is, of course, that it relieves them from the political consequences of their law-breaking. In the long run, because of our notion of Parliamentary supremacy, the only protection for judges from a marauding Executive is political."
"'I have the greatest respect for our judiciary and the rule of law in this country,' wrote Rishi Sunak, before proceeding to threaten a new measure which he would 'activate in the event of judicial recidivism'. You can threaten judges who find against you or you can claim respect for the rule of law, but you can't do both. That press release sent out by Rishi Sunak during his leadership campaign, which mentioned me by name ten times, led to a further series of toxic attacks in national newspapers -- one branding me 'Public Enemy Number One'." This reminds me of HK where pro-Beijing newspapers would name certain politicians, which served as an early warning of their arrest.
The not so good:
* The latter chapters felt less tight and occasionally I was not sure what Maugham's point was.
* The nature of the book meant that it is quite self-absorbed, and can give the impression of self-congratulatory, to the Good Law Project.
* The book seems to sit on the fence between written for lawyers/academics and written for the public, which is fair enough. But, I was left wanting about both more facts and legal details, but also insight into strategic campaigning/litigation. Except for the PPE chapter where I was thrown a bunch of figures and that felt dense to me, but many because I'm not a numbers person.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 11, 2023
An eye-opener to the corruption and deceit by Boris Johnson and the Conservative government. The blatant breaking of laws and then the undermining the legal system is the exact playbook of dictators throughout history. Thank goodness for the Good Law Project who will stand up for those who don't have the money and power to challenge these abuses of position.
June 29, 2024
Bringing Down Goliath provides some good insight into how the law can be - and has been - used to hold those with power to account, primarily the government but also corporations. It shows the limits currently placed on the judiciary in holding these bodies to account and why this is an issue for democracy.
The first half of the book explains the key elements of the UK's political and legal systems, before going on to talk about cases that the Good Law Project has brought against the government (and Uber in one chapter).
It does appear to be biased, but this may be due to the fact that, at the time of writing, the Good Law Project has only been active since the coalition government, so has not yet had an opportunity - or the need - to bring cases against a Labour government.
What I believe is most valuable about this book is that: 1) it is written in a way that is easy to understand for people who are not legal or political experts, and 2) it provides a call to action and explains how people can use the law within their local communities.
Overall, I would recommend this book to students, teachers and anyone with a general interest in UK politics and law, especially those who are concerned about the current state of our democracy.
The first half of the book explains the key elements of the UK's political and legal systems, before going on to talk about cases that the Good Law Project has brought against the government (and Uber in one chapter).
It does appear to be biased, but this may be due to the fact that, at the time of writing, the Good Law Project has only been active since the coalition government, so has not yet had an opportunity - or the need - to bring cases against a Labour government.
What I believe is most valuable about this book is that: 1) it is written in a way that is easy to understand for people who are not legal or political experts, and 2) it provides a call to action and explains how people can use the law within their local communities.
Overall, I would recommend this book to students, teachers and anyone with a general interest in UK politics and law, especially those who are concerned about the current state of our democracy.
October 20, 2023
A book that offers a brilliant insight into public law in the UK and the Good Law Project. The chapters concerning the prorogation of parliament and the ‘nob of’ cases are incredibly fascinating and are the stars of the book. The chapter concerning Uber also manages to make tax law somewhat interesting. Where the book is let down is perhaps by its pacing, the early chapters were a bit dry in offering a basic introduction to the English legal system (albeit it, as a lawyer myself, they may be of greater interest to someone new to the subject), and the books closes by focusing on the blatant corruption concerning PPE contracts in the early stages of the pandemic. In particular the PPE chapter felt a bit repetitive. While it succeeds in pointing out how common ‘sleaze’ is within the British Government, by the time it gets to the third similar example of these contracts, the point feels tired. I understand that this book takes a somewhat chronological order, but I can’t help but feel, it may have been better had it finished with the prorogation, rather than it being halfway through.
Despite the above, I still think the book is well worth the read
Despite the above, I still think the book is well worth the read
February 29, 2024
Bit of a sales pitch for The Good Law Project but thank goodness we have a law organisation at least attempting to hold some of those in power to account and giving legal representation to the everyday people. Because they are funded by small individual donations it is a really people-powered movement.
The legal jargon makes it quite a challenging read and he does sound a little pompous at times but the cases he covers are really interesting - the prorogation of parliament, PPE purchases, Uber to name a few. The hatred and scathing attacks he's been subject to from certain media and political parties are reminiscent of Putin's vindictiveness, without the murder.
The PPE scandal is outrageous and stinks of scandal. £12.5 billion spent and £10 billion wasted. Why did we buy so much of it and overpay for it.
And as for the Brexit vote - I think I either hadn't realised or certainly had forgotten that it was only ever meant to be an advisory referendum and there was no legal requirement to act on it. Completely infuriating.
The legal jargon makes it quite a challenging read and he does sound a little pompous at times but the cases he covers are really interesting - the prorogation of parliament, PPE purchases, Uber to name a few. The hatred and scathing attacks he's been subject to from certain media and political parties are reminiscent of Putin's vindictiveness, without the murder.
The PPE scandal is outrageous and stinks of scandal. £12.5 billion spent and £10 billion wasted. Why did we buy so much of it and overpay for it.
And as for the Brexit vote - I think I either hadn't realised or certainly had forgotten that it was only ever meant to be an advisory referendum and there was no legal requirement to act on it. Completely infuriating.
February 7, 2024
I'd been aware of the work of Good Law Project for a few months, and had seen their work in exposing Uber's dodgy tax arrangements, reversing Johnson's illegal suspension of parliament and their work exposing the immoral and corrupt VIP PPE lane contracts. But reading this book made me realise I didn't know anywhere near enough about these cases. If you're interested in the law, and concerned about how the rich and powerful try to subvert the law for their own purposes, then this is a must-read for you. Jolyon Maugham KC uses his own experience to expose how corporations and government go about breaking the law, giving insights into the UK legal system and its failings in an easily understandable way. A great, if blood-boiling, read.
October 22, 2023
Publicly available opinions of this book seem to depend heavily on whether the reviewer shares the author's political views. Personally, I do, and have admired Jolyon Maugham since hearing him speak in person during the Remain campaign. I've read better-structured books than this, and am not sure about the right balance between the personal and the political. BUT if you want a succinct overview of the current government's deliberate attacks on the rule of law, this is what you should read. In particular, the chapter on the PPE procurement scandal is breathtaking, even for those of us who thought we knew the facts.
May 19, 2024
A powerful book in the main and a record of the phenomenal and welcome rise of the Good Law Project over the space of a few years. But it feels rather uneven to me with plodding chapters on judges and jurisprudence with little in the way of a story and over familiar areas like Brexit. It would be five stars if everything was as jaw dropping as the astonishing work about PPE procurement - surely some one should go to jail for the billions that were effectively stolen from the public purse. Or more likely they won't.
And not sure Good Law Plans for the future are very coherent but it is certainly a record that deserves the greatest praise.
And not sure Good Law Plans for the future are very coherent but it is certainly a record that deserves the greatest praise.
July 30, 2023
Uncomfortable reading but so good!
Jolyon talks about how The Good Law Project came to he. He tells his story with no frills and doesn't hide the mistakes and pain he has experienced. It is eye opening and sometimes a little depressing and frustrating to realise how poor our democracy and rule of law is. However there are many positives as well with ideas to go forward. I really hope at least one and preferably all 3 of his big projects to fruition and I look forward to seeing more actions. Thank you for sparks of hope!
Jolyon talks about how The Good Law Project came to he. He tells his story with no frills and doesn't hide the mistakes and pain he has experienced. It is eye opening and sometimes a little depressing and frustrating to realise how poor our democracy and rule of law is. However there are many positives as well with ideas to go forward. I really hope at least one and preferably all 3 of his big projects to fruition and I look forward to seeing more actions. Thank you for sparks of hope!
December 16, 2023
I had a patchy start with this book, which covers a lot of different ground and ideas. I found it difficult to follow at first. But with each page, the book became more interesting and easier to read. And then it started to flow.
It is an inspiring book full of candour, and even more noble intentions. A must read if you want to take a step towards understanding the complexity of the current British system, and the morality that it grapples with.
It is an inspiring book full of candour, and even more noble intentions. A must read if you want to take a step towards understanding the complexity of the current British system, and the morality that it grapples with.
May 26, 2024
My politics are aligned really to Jolyon but I do understand that a lot of people more review the books based on their political leanings but I found this book to be very high on his self-regard and vanity, it’s okay but it does get very tedious when he’s discussing his accomplishments
May 10, 2023
Just badly written full stop. Where was the editor?
August 9, 2023
3.5 I think the mention of the fox was not necessary 😢
May 20, 2024
Excellent and informative book, utterly infuriating at times but perfectly exemplifies the corruption in our Westminster government!
Keep up the excellent work Jolyon, we need more people like you.
Keep up the excellent work Jolyon, we need more people like you.
July 17, 2024
A book that everyone should read
August 13, 2024
A book that everyone should read so that we all understand how essential it is to hold those in power to account. The Good Law Project is an organisation that is doing tremendous work for the public good. It deserves our gratitude.
May 1, 2024
A good insight into the current political system in the UK that I'd highly recommend to someone that is curious but maybe not too well versed in current goings-on.
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