The use of crowdfunding to bring judicial review claims, especially ‘public interest litigation’, has grown rapidly in recent years in the United Kingdom, as has its visibility and notoriety. This presents the scholarly and policy community with important questions concerning, not least, how crowdfunding works in litigation and what to do about its increasing adoption. Peculiarly, though, there has been limited dedicated and rigorous study, particularly empirical work understanding its operation in practice. This thesis begins to address this sizeable lacuna, presenting a mixed-methods empirical study of the use of crowdfunding, informed primarily by the legal mobilisation framework.
It makes a number of core contributions to the developing debate. First, it argues that, while commentators commonly frame crowdfunding as a disruptive force, crowdfunding has become reasonably routinised in public law litigation. Many crowdfunded claims are small-scale and localised, as demonstrated by quantitative analysis, while the resource appears fairly well-understood across parties to public interest litigation, as a tool working alongside other mechanisms like costs-capping. Second, it proposes that crowdfunding offers claimant groups a number of resource benefits, not confined to its monetary role – crowdfunding may also represent a non-material, cultural and rhetorical resource for groups. Third, it highlights that using crowdfunding to fund litigation is not as easy and spurious as some portray – fundraising presents resource burdens, while claimants face a power imbalance when mobilising law vis-à-vis government and judicial system designers.
The thesis is structured across three overarching parts. Part One outlines the relevant scholarship and the study’s methodology, and provides a systematic quantitative picture of the crowdfunding landscape. Part Two positions crowdfunding as a multifaceted resource for public interest litigants, offering material and non-material resource opportunities for effective mobilisation. Part Three pivots to emphasise the challenges litigants encounter when using crowdfunding to litigate.
