Motha, Stewart (2025) What is (the) matter with climate litigation? Law, nature, and the limits of legal technique. Journal of Law and Society , ISSN 0263-323X.
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Abstract
This essay examines how ‘nature’ is mediated by law in climate cases. In Minister for the Environment v Sharma (2022) (Federal Court, Aust.), the court applied a narrow definition of ‘matter of law’ (justiciability), and thereby negated ‘matter in law’ (as CO2, and ecological destruction). Climate destruction demands the extension of legal categories and obligations such as tort and nuisance. But rendering matter through law manifests the classical opposition between nomos and physis (law and nature). By considering the treatment of ‘matter’ in climate cases, I open a wider discussion about the limits and potential of legal technique as a means of mediating ‘nature’. Turning to Adorno’s negative dialectics, I consider how the negation of nature might be redeemed through the extension of legal concepts. Such legal mediation shows the potential for reorienting the dialectic of law and nature – an urgent means of pursuing planetary justice in the current moment.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Law School |
| Depositing User: | Stewart Motha |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Apr 2025 12:29 |
| Last Modified: | 22 May 2025 18:55 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/55370 |
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