The Revolution Will Not Be Litigated

“The law is no magic bullet when it comes to bringing about change, but if you understand its power as a tool, you can harness it to bring about the change yourself—especially if you do it with others as a movement. In this respect I have found The Revolution Will Not Be Litigated to be transformational.”—Jane Fonda

“Every person in this book has spent their lives acting like the house is on fire and responding to the world’s most pressing problems with the urgency they deserve. But more than that, they are offering a roadmap for doing what is often considered to be impossible, but necessary. They are the true leaders that the world needs to listen to and follow.”—Greta Thunberg

“These are the lawyers who give my profession a good name! They are also the movement leaders we all need to be listening to. They write with passion, joy and wisdom. The result is a collection of beautiful personal essays by powerful people who have figured out what it takes to shift power and win—often in ‘impossible’ situations and places.”—Van Jones

“If you say you want a revolution, this stirring volume teaches what every human rights lawyer learns the hard way: lasting victories are only won through an ‘inside-outside’ game, where lawyers fight in court for what activists fight in the streets. The chapters take you on a dizzying tour d’horizon spanning Black Lives Matter, environmental justice, reproductive rights, global financial accountability, and AIDS action, unfolding on the streets of New York, labor camps in Burma, the Peruvian Amazon, India, Kenya, Xi’s China and Putin’s Russia. The stories are inspiring and the lessons bracing.”—Harold Hongju Koh, former Dean, Yale Law School

Mark Gevisser is one of South Africa’s foremost authors and journalists. His books include The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers; Lost and Found in Johannesburg; and the award-winning A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of South Africa’s Dream. His journalism and criticism has been published widely, in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Granta, and many other publications.

Katie Redford is a lawyer with expertise in human rights, climate change and corporate accountability. She is executive director of the Equation Campaign, which confronts the climate crisis by “supporting movements on the ground to keep fossil fuels in the ground.” She was a co-founder and director of EarthRights International, where she oversaw litigation, training and campaigns programs to hold corporations and other perpetrators legally accountable for human rights and environmental abuses worldwide.