In this module, we critically assess the role of law in regulating and protecting the environment by examining a range of current environmental challenges such as climate change, food supply, biodiversity loss and energy use. Drawing on a number of case studies of environmental law and governance, we examine the range of regulatory approaches and mechanisms deployed, including traditional ‘top-down’ models of regulation and more innovative grassroots responses to environmental issues. We also introduce some theoretical critiques of mainstream legal responses to climate and environmental issues, exploring law’s foundational assumptions in order to examine the way in which law understands and constructs the ‘human’ relationship with the ‘environment’. In an age of environmental crisis, nothing could be more urgent than questioning the fundamental assumptions underpinning our legal and social relations with the ‘living order’. This course invites students to do just that.

• Understand certain key theoretical debates concerning the nature of ‘law-in-the-environment’.
• Discuss and critically evaluate different theoretical explanations of some of the central puzzles concerning law’s construction of the ‘human’ and of ‘the environment’.
• Understand relationships between relevant legal fields, including human rights, environmental law and climate law.
• Demonstrate improvement in knowledge and skills in the critical analysis of legal, environmental and theoretical arguments.
• Appreciate the presence and identity of core philosophical and ideological assumptions underlying substantive environmental law.
• Evaluate and critically assess key provisions in environmental law, whether they are found in regulation, in case law or in international sources.
• Apply informed critique to and evaluate contemporary environmental rights and policy scenarios.

This module will be delivered using a combination of lectures and interactive seminar sessions.

Intellectual Skills: You will be expected to improve your ability to:

• Read, analyse and evaluate a range of texts: theoretical, political and legal – including primary sources of law and regulation.
• Identify, analyse and apply relevant materials and to provide independent argument.
• Construct, refine and deliver well supported argumentative responses to specific questions – whether delivered orally or in writing.
• Work constructively with others to develop well-supported argument and to deliver persuasive conclusions – both orally and in writing.

Discipline Specific (including practical) Skills:

• Present accurately and succinctly, in both oral and written form, arguments concerning laws, principles, regulations and policy positions concerning environmental concerns.
• Analyse and critically assess the academic literature on environmental law, whether legal, non-legal or interdisciplinary.

Transferable Skills:

• Critical analysis.
• Evaluation.
• Interpretation.
• Synthesis.
• Argumentation.
• Communication.
• Presentation.
• Independence/Autonomous learning.
• Collaboration/Team work.

Coursework 1 (3000 words) 50%

Coursework 2 (3000 words) 50%

1. Advanced Textual Analysis Skills
2. The Foundations of Environmental Law: An Introduction
3. Legal Frameworks on Climate Change
4. Climate Injustice and the Limits of Law
5. Legal Frameworks on Conservation and Biodiversity
6. Critical Readings of the Convention on Biological Diversity
7. Legal Regulation of Genetically Modified Organisms
8. The Corporate Food Regime
9. Eating the Future: Industrial Meat Production and Climate Change
10. Legal Regulation of Energy Systems: Fossil Fuels and Alternatives
11. Another Look at Climate Injustice and the Future: Commons Movements and Frameworks 1: Thought
12. Commons Movements and Frameworks II: Action
13.  ‘Something, just maybe, more liveable’? Towards New Foundations.
14. Reflection and Review

Indicative Reading and Resource List: NB: this list is indicative only. You will be set reading each week from a range of articles and/or text books/monographs, and sometimes asked to watch films. You do not need to purchase any books for this course.

Core Texts (Indicative only)

• S Bell, D McGillivray and O Pedersen, Environmental Law (8^th edition, Oxford University Press 2013)
• R Zimmerman (ed) Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (4^th edition, Prentice Hall 2004)
• A Grear (ed) Should Trees Have Standing? 40 Years On (Edward Elgar Publishing 2012)
• A Grear and C Gearty (eds) Choosing a Future: The Social and Legal Aspects of Climate Change (Edward Elgar Publishing 2014)

Sample Seminar Reading Lists: (Indicative only)

Seminar 1 – Legal Frameworks on Climate Change

Essential reading

• Elizabeth Fisher, Bettina Lange and Eloise Scotford, Environmental Law: Text, Cases and Materials (OUP, Oxford 2013), chapters 1, 2 and 15 (pp 636-663 only)

• Mark Stallworthy, ‘Legislating Against Climate Change: A UK Perspective on a Sisyphean Challenge’ (2009) 72(3) Modern Law Review 412-436

• David Campbell, ‘

Further reading

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability – Summary for Policymakers (available on Learning Central)

• Stephen Humphreys, ‘Climate Justice: the claim of the past’ (2014) 5 Journal of Human Rights & the Environment 134-148

• Richard J. Lazarus, ‘Super Wicked Problems and Climate Change: Restraining the Present to Liberate the Future’ (2009) 5 Cornwell Law Review 1153-1233

• Nicholas Stern, ‘The Economics of Climate Change’ (2008) 98(2) American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 1-37

• Mary Christina Wood, ‘”You Can’t Negotiate with a Beetle”: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age’ (2010) 50 Natural Resources Journal 167-210

•  Seminar 2: Climate /Injustice and the Limits of Law

• Essential reading

  Stephen Humphreys, ‘Climate Justice: the claim of the past’ (2014) 5 Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 134-148. (Available on Learning Central.)

• Anna Grear, ‘Towards “climate justice”? A critical reflection on legal subjectivity and climate injustice: warning signals, patterned hierarchies, directions for future law and policy’ (2014) 0 Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 103-133. (Available on Learning Central.)

• Carmen G Gonzalez, ‘Environmental Justice, Human Rights and the Global South’ (2015) 13 Santa Clara Journal of International Law 151-195. (Available on Learning Central.)

• Recommended supplementary reading

  Vandana Shiva, ‘The Impoverishment of the Environment: Women and Children Last’ in ME Zimmerman, J Baird Callicot, KJ Warren, IJ Klaver, and J Clark, Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (4^th Edn) (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall 2004) 178-195.

• Ernest Partridge, ‘With Liberty for Some: A Liberal Critique of Libertarian Environmental Policy’ in ME Zimmerman, J Baird Callicot, KJ Warren, IJ Klaver, and J Clark, Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (4^th Edn) (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall 2004) 430-449.  

• David Watson, ‘Against the Megamachine: Empire and the Earth’ in ME Zimmerman, J Baird Callicot, KJ Warren, IJ Klaver, and J Clark, Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (4^th Edn) (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall 2004) 479-495.

• The Corporation (film). (Link available through Learning Central.)