Radically Legal
Berlin Constitutes the Future

Kusiak argues that to save our cities from the housing crisis we need a revolution powered by the law.

Joanna Kusiak (Author)

9781009516945, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 June 2024

202 pages
21.4 x 13.8 x 1 cm, 0.29 kg

'We live in an age when many citizens might feel powerless in the face of powerful financial corporations. However, Kusiak's account is an inspiring analysis of how the public good can be championed. Written in an engaging, first-person style, it shows how the law can be used to protect people - not just control them. A novel blend of legal sociology and political anthropology, this is highly useful for anyone who wants to make sense of the clash between private equity and public good - or is curious to know what our future cities may look like.' Gillian Tett, Financial Times

Right in the middle of the German constitution, a group of ordinary citizens discovers a forgotten clause that allows them to take 240,000 homes back from multi-billion corporations. In this work of creative non-fiction, scholar-activist and Nine Dots Prize winner Joanna Kusiak tells the story of a grassroots movement that convinced a million Berliners to pop the speculative housing bubble. She offers a vision of urban housing as democratically held commons, legally managed by a radically new institutional model that works through democratic conflicts. Moving between interdisciplinary analysis and her own personal story, Kusiak connects the dots between the past and the present, the local and the global, and shows the potential of radically legal politics as a means of strengthening our democracies and reviving the rule of law. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

1. Taking the Tram Home: Prelude to Change
2. We Are All Staying Put: Property and Freedom
3. Berlin Becomes a High Risk Capital: The Law and the Movement
4. Who Constitutes Power?: Checks and Balances
5. Berlin Is the Greatest Extravaganza: Sexy and Solidaristic
6. The Rule of Law Is Having a Midlife Crisis: Shadow and Difference
7. Before the Law: Franz Kafka feat. DWE.

Subject Areas: Jurisprudence & general issues [LA]