The Conversation: Jonathan Sumption

(Tuesday 16th June 2026)

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The Challenges of Democracy, and the Rule of Law

The historian and lawyer, who served as a Supreme Court Justice for six years, robustly and exactingly interrogates the limits and breaking points of established democracy in the modern world. He examines Trump’s disregard for the checks and balances of the US Constitution, the criminal implications of Israel’s actions in Palestine, the exercise of sovereignty in the Brexit vote, the contrary meanings of Freedom of Speech,and the overreach of the ECHR and under-reach of the ICC. He asks how did we get to this and where do we go from here?

In conversation with Helen Mountfield KC, Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford.