Law, Society, and Ecology

• In Event: 41055 - Sociology of Law Open Topics II

Abstract

The roots of law, society, and ecology run deep. With the climate crisis upon us, and the challenges for society and governance ever more apparent, socio-legal scholars should find inspiration in and build upon this legacy of interdisciplinarity. Doing so will help cultivate projects to explain and address complex problems in which legal, social, and ecological change are intertwined.

This paper, a work in progress toward a review essay, surveys historical and recent research and theorizing on law, society, and ecology, and points to promising directions for future work. It looks back to early works by Locke on property, Montesquieu on law’s relation to land, and Marx on the theft of wood. It then discusses how ecology figured in sociological jurisprudence and law and society scholarship, and draws contrasts with how legal and environmental historians as well as systems ecologists have traced links between law, society, and ecology.

Constructing this intellectual genealogy reveals a range of methodological, conceptual, and normative approaches to understanding how legal change has remade ecologies, and how ecological change has reshaped law and society. Ours is hardly the first time that scholars have sought to explain such moments of contestation and change. For today’s socio-legal scholars, looking back helps build a toolkit for developing questions and projects that bring ecology back in to the study of law and society. The essay will close by highlighting recent socio-legal scholarship that has adopted a LS&E approach, and potentially fruitful areas for future research.

Author

• Nate Ela, Temple University