This paper addresses how during Kenya’s era of intense political repression spanning the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, the government of Daniel arap Moi came to routinize juridical and physical violence as key modalities of statecraft in its efforts to quell opposition. Conflicting desires to cultivate rule of law legitimacy and to crush dissent characterized the regime’s approach to governance during this period. At the same time, the Kenya case offers important insights into a significant, but much less-studied, phenomenon: legal mobilization against authoritarianism. Activist lawyers and legal associations in Kenya drew upon an array of tools, strategies, and connections to resist Moi’s autocratic legalism. Examining their tactics enables us to consider how “lawfare” need not be considered exclusively the purview of repressive regimes but rather can take in legally-based resistance to authoritarianism.