Connecting Laws to Climates: A Timely Challenge for Reflexive Lawyers

Abstract

In his Montesquieu lecture, Professor Ralf Michaels urged lawyers to transcend their disciplinary boundaries when addressing the challenge of law and climate change. Montesquieu himself is regarded as an example of a lawyer who did not shy away from investigating the relationship between law and society to consider the interplay between law and climate. In my response, I argue that the current reflexive nature of society, within the distinctive historical context of the Anthropocene, poses paradoxes for lawyers attempting to utilize law to grapple with climate change. These paradoxes are linked to the politicization of law, societal skepticism of science, and the role of the non-human within the legal order. They compel lawyers to critically examine the conceptual framework of law and explore Western and non-Western perspectives on subjects such as property, representation, rights, and personhood. Looking beyond boundaries also involves acknowledging the potentially problematic nature of law itself.

Keywords

• anthropocene
• reflexivity
• climate law
• montesquieu