In this video clip, Shivesh Kuksal explains the core motivations behind establishing Rule O’Flaw, situating the organisation’s mission within a broader philosophy of process optimisation and civic empowerment.
Kuksal identifies two principal objectives. The first is to make highly technical and typically inaccessible information available to a wide audience. Rule O’Flaw has conducted years of exhaustive research into the cognitive, behavioural, and institutional factors that influence judicial decision-making and government accountability. The organisation’s approach involves not merely compiling existing scholarship but synthesising it—identifying the most consequential developments and publications, and developing methods to present complex material in ways that non-specialists can understand and use. This is a deliberate effort to bridge the gap between academic knowledge and practical civic engagement—a gap that, Kuksal argues, has allowed systemic dysfunction to persist unchallenged.
The second objective is the practical application of that knowledge in the adversarial context of government accountability. Kuksal acknowledges the formidable difficulty of this enterprise: government systems are rigid, government institutions are well-resourced, and effecting change through legal channels requires not only substantive expertise but also procedural precision and strategic acumen.
Kuksal then identifies two personal motivations that converge in this work. The first is an enduring interest in process optimisation—specifically, optimising the most consequential category of transactions citizens engage in: their interactions with government. Public policy, he observes, determines the conditions of virtually every aspect of life, from economic opportunity to personal liberty. The second motivation is the defence of human rights, understood not merely as formal entitlements but as expressions of human dignity, autonomy, and will. When these are trampled by the state, the impulse to seek redress is not merely legal but deeply human.
For the rule of law, Kuksal’s analysis highlights a paradox at the heart of modern governance: the institutions that are supposed to protect citizens’ rights are often the most significant impediments to their enforcement. The knowledge necessary to challenge this state of affairs exists, but it is frequently locked away in academic journals and university libraries, inaccessible to the people who need it most. Rule O’Flaw’s mission is to confront this paradox by bridging the gap between knowledge and power—equipping citizens with the understanding and tools to act as their own advocates, transforming them from passive subjects of a system that may or may not function properly into active agents of accountability.
