Across the globe, democracy is in crisis - in the UK alone, it has been rocked by Brexit, the pandemic and successive attempts by governments to bypass legal norms. But how did this happen, and where might we go from here? Jonathan Sumption cuts through the political noise with acute analysis of the state of democracy today - from the vulnerabilities of international law to the deepening suppression of democracy activism in Hong Kong, and from the complexities of human rights legislation to the defence of freedom of speech. Timely, incisive and wholly original, Challenges of Democracy applies the brilliance of 'the cleverest man in Britain' to the most urgent and far-reaching political issue of our day.
Jonathan Sumption, Lord Sumption, is a British judge and historian. He served as a Justice of the Supreme Court from 2012 to 2018. He has written several books of Medieval history including The Age of Pilgrimage, the Albigensian Crusade, and four books on the Hundred Years War, the third of which, Divided Houses, won the 2009 Wolfson History Prize. His previous books were published by Faber & Faber.