Learning Sacrifice: Legal Education in the Anthropocene

In 2019, scientists declared ‘clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency’ (Ripple et al. 2019). According to current data, ‘we need bold and drastic transformations’ of the status quo to ‘avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis’ (Ripple et al. 2019, 1). What, if any, ‘bold and drastic’ change might legal educators effect to this end? Legal education plays an important role in facilitating and regulating anthropogenic environmental change by reproducing the knowledge and skills used by generations of legal professionals and policy-makers to legitimate and prohibit certain economic and social relations and practices (Graham 2014). Law prescribes a relationship between the human and more-than-human worlds that is unsustainable (Watson 2018; Steffen et al. 2015). By moving beyond a ‘business-as-usual’ approach to our work as designers, teachers and assessors of legal knowledge, we could transform the way that law is learned – enabling law graduates to ‘assist decision-makers in a just transition to a sustainable and equitable future’ (Ripple et al. 2019, 4). The overarching objective of legal education for the Anthropocene is to foreground and subvert the contribution of law and private rights to anthropogenic climate change. We must take up pedagogical opportunities to effect change before tipping points are reached beyond which such endeavour would be ineffectual.