Two friends are holding hands, blocking the entrance to the Royal Courts of Justice. Their grasp is stuck with glue, and they’ve fixed their free hands to the metal gateposts. The pair are making a stand against the justice system itself and its treatment of protesters. In particular, they’re trying to draw attention to what they see as the scandal of injunctions.

Callum Goode and Tez Burns are meant to be inside the court for breaking an injunction brought by National Highways Limited (NHL) for climbing gantries over the M25, London’s ring road, to demand an end to new oil and gas licences. But instead of facing the judge, the Just Stop Oil activists are outside. Goode’s T-shirt bears the words “Justice for Sale”. Both defendants, who identify as non-binary, say they can’t accept the authority of a court that grants companies private laws that suppress protests.

An injunction is a court order that usually prohibits an act by either a specific person or group. They were designed to address behaviour by known and named individuals, and can be used, for example, to stop one person harassing another or from revealing company secrets.

In recent years, injunctions have increasingly been deployed to stop protesters who are targeting public and fossil fuel infrastructure. Where once an injunction might have protected a small area of private property, such as a factory, there are now injunctions that cover huge areas of land, such as the whole strategic roads network or the entire route of HS2. Injunctions are being levied not only at named individuals but at “persons unknown”, making them catch-all. The barrister Adam Wagner has called these more repressive examples “Mega Person Unknown Injunctions”.

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