The Rule O’Flaw Podcast

The Flaws in Contemporary Legal Systems and Our Vision for Reform

In this 37‑minute conversation, Shivesh and Peter share key insights from their journey as judicial reform activists and explain how cognitive science exposes systemic corruption in contemporary judicial systems. 

The discussion offers a radical, empirically grounded critique of how contemporary legal institutions structurally incentivise corruption, procedural predation, and professional bad faith, particularly in criminal prosecution and civil regulation. Framing public interest litigation as a form of systemic “audit” rather than conventional client‑centred advocacy, Shivesh treats each case as an experiment to expose and document the behavioural regularities of courts, regulators, and government lawyers under conditions of sustained contestation.

Drawing on cognitive psychology and institutional economics of corruption (including Johann Lambsdorff’s work on “benevolent entrepreneurs” and the “invisible boot” of the market), the discussion explores how shame, conflict‑of‑interest engineering, and technological leverage can be deployed to discipline powerful actors who exploit plea bargaining, civil procedure, and judicial immunity to manufacture convenient rather than truthful outcomes.

The discussion’s most striking features are its fusion of personal experience with a rigorously theorised account of systemic corruption, its provocative advocacy of algorithmic adjudication and biometric monitoring of judges, and its unapologetic rejection of professional civility norms as complicity in what is characterised as an ongoing fraud on the court.

Chapters

00:00: The Entrepreneur’s Philosophical Inquiry 

02:16: The Call for Algorithmic Justice

04:40: The Commoditisation of Law and the Incompatibility of the Profession

06:39: The Perversion of Procedure and the Need for Human Idealism

09:21: Judicial Discretion, Immunity, and Accountability

26:40: Auditing the System: Combating Institutional Corruption