Janelle Orsi and the Art of the Legal Hack

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier

Janelle Orsi, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center, in Oakland, California, is an accomplished practitioner of creative legal hacks. She and her colleagues at the Law Center focus on ingenious ways to decommodify land to keep housing and farmland affordable; to empower peer governance and give people control over their lives; and to provide legal structures that help people acquire greater security by "surrendering into each other's arms." Orsi and the Law Center are at the forefront of the kinds of innovative lawyering needed to build a more just, eco-friendly, localized and humane world.