How can we hold dictators to account? The list of those who have enjoyed complete impunity is long. Lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck has spent his whole life fighting to reverse this state of affairs: using the law to challenge Latin American ex-dictators, representing the families of US drone-attack victims in Yemen, and filing criminal complaints against the likes of ex-US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld.

Kaleck’s latest book is a manifesto for international law and how it can be used to change the status quo. As Edward Snowden writes in the foreword: ‘when the history of our era is written not by the torturers and their apologists, but by those who never gave up on the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… Wolfgang Kaleck will be one of the primary authors.’

A compelling read, Law Versus Power offers much more than the dry rhetoric of a seasoned lawyer. Kaleck’s writing is personal, passionate and self-questioning. The narrative thread provides a chronological and reflective account of the cases that he and his partners have researched and submitted over several decades.

Ranging from the first conversations with the victims to the first tentative results (or disappointments) emerging years later, his writing skilfully draws us into the complexities of each case and what’s at stake.

Read the full review here.