Environmental Rights & Responsibilities (LAWS20009)

The relationship between humans and the environment is one of the defining issues of our time. Environmental problems are relevant to all levels of government and matter for local, Indigenous, national and international communities. These problems and the conflicts that they produce intersect with various legal systems. Constitutional and administrative law, property and private law, international environmental law, human rights and animal law organise the human relationship with the non-human world. The law assigns legal status to interests in the environment and the non-human world, framing these as a bundle of resources for the extraction of value. It creates interests in the protection and preservation of those worlds. And it provides the fora and rules to resolve conflicts about those interests, where different actors compete to frame the legal questions at stake.

This subject offers an introduction to how law frames the human relationship to the environment and non-human world, including issues of democracy, environmental justice, the treatment of animals and global inequality. It brings together a number of areas of law, and invites students to consider legal principles, institutions and legal questions at the heart of environmental conflicts. The subject will draw on case studies in Australian, comparative and international law. It will invite students to explore the way that various areas of law are implicated in environmental problems and injustice, and to consider how law can be reformed to perform a protective function. The subject will also feature guest lectures and interviews with social movement and NGO lawyers, barristers, consultants and activists, to provide students with insight into the ‘real world’ work of practitioners engaged in protecting the environment, cultural heritage, and animals.

Indicative principal topics include:

• the emergence of the ‘environment’ in law and how this influences environmental conflicts;
• Indigenous law, sovereignty, colonialism and land;
• rights of nature and legal pluralism;
• the treatment of animals in law;
• the relationship between democracy, environmental problems, and the climate crisis;
• the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) and legal mobilisation in Australia;
• the law of civil disobedience, direct action and disruptive protest;
• how law frames struggles between corporate actors and social movements over interests in the environment;
• ‘sustainable development’ and the climate crisis;
• international legal frameworks emerging in response to the climate crisis;