What is the Climate? Notes on a Critical Legal Methodology

Abstract

In this commentary on Prof. Ralf Michaels’ 2023 Montesquieu Lecture, I ask what it is that legal scholars invoke when referring to ‘the climate’. Drawing on material semiotics and science and technology studies, I argue that it is productive to become attuned to how the climate is in fact a multiple phenomenon which is produced across social, cultural, economic, financial, technological, political, scientific and other domains. Building on this argument, I offer some preliminary reflections on what a turn from ‘the climate’ to multiple climates might mean for developing a critical legal methodology.

Keywords

• climate change
• critical legal studies
• co-production
• situated knowledges