A presentation by Alexandra Huneeus (University of Wisconsin). This event is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights.
Rights of nature quickly have become part of the transnational lexicon of rights. Though a recent and still liminal trend, they have begun to inform approaches to environmental protection as well as to relations with indigenous peoples, and in particular to the connection between the two. The paper argues that rights of nature law draws on three distinct, and at times contradictory, types of justification. The first strand views the legal personhood of nature as a useful legal fiction that allows us to better assign value to natural areas in decisions about whether and how they should be developed. The second strand is more audacious: it views rights of nature as expressing and advancing an ontological shift in how we understand the relations between humans and the environment. Taken to its extreme, it is a view that destabilises the line law draws between humans and other living entities and, even more disruptively, the line Western thought draws between living and non-living entities. The third strand views rights of nature as part of multicultural constitutionalism that is committed to acknowledging and giving legal weight to the worldviews of indigenous peoples and other non-Western ethnically identified groups. Despite the differences between these strands of justificatory argument, those who advocate for rights of nature tend to draw on all three at once without distinguishing between them. However, the three strands are analytically distinct and are positioned differently vis a vis traditional liberal democratic values. Ultimately, whether rights of nature will be viewed as participating in the liberal democratic canon or challenging it may turn on which strand predominates.
This presentation is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium's cluster on 'Emerging Challenges to Fundamental Rights'.
Alexandra Huneeus is Professor of Law and Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her scholarship focuses on human rights law, with emphasis on Latin America. Huneeus' work stands at the intersection of law, political science, and sociology, and has been published in the American Journal of International Law, Harvard International Law Journal, Law and Social Inquiry, Yale Journal of International Law, Leiden International Law Journal, and by Cambridge University Press. She received her PhD, JD and BA from University of California, Berkeley, and was a post-doc at Stanford University's Center on Development, Democracy and the Rule of Law. In 2017, Professor Huneeus was named to serve a ten-year term as Foreign Expert Jurist in the Colombian Jurisdicción para la Paz (JEP), a court created as part of the Colombian peace process. At UW, Huneeus currently serves as Director of the Center for Law, Society and Justice. She is Chair of the University of Wisconsin Human Rights Program, which she co-founded, and Director of the Global Legal Studies Program. She is on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law, and of Law and Social Inquiry. Previously, she has served on the Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association and the American Society for Comparative Law, and as section chair for the Midwest Political Science Association (Law and Courts) and for the ASIL Midwest Interest Group on International law.
Prior registration is required. Registered attendees will receive the dial-in details as well as a draft paper, on which the presentation is based, via e-mail prior to the event.
