Climate Change and the Law
This colloquium will examine global climate change and the range of actual and potential responses by legal institutions. In so doing it will also explore fundamental questions about legal response to looming crises, using climate change as the focal point of a broader discussion. Can legal institutions deal with such mega-problems? Will doing so lead to basic changes in legal institutions?
We will investigate the (questionable) capacity of existing law to manage climate change, from the international Kyoto Protocol, to the European ETS, to the US Clean Air Act and the various state-level initiatives. This inquiry will look at political constraints on legal reform, both in the United States, in other countries, and in international regimes. How do domestic political institutions affect international action? Can current institutions really deal with a problem as enormous, complex, long-term, and uncertain as climate change? How do institutions and the public react to potential catastrophes?
In turn, we will study the impact that climate change may have on legal change. This will include consideration of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Massachusetts v. EPA on standing to sue, statutory interpretation, and administrative discretion; efforts to extend common-law principles such as tort to assign liability for climate-change harms; the implications for reform of regulation more generally; and the implications for federalism and scales of governance.
We will debate alternative approaches to the ideal legal regime to address climate change: on what spatial scale (regional, national, global), on what time scale (precautionary or adaptive, over decades or centuries), with what mechanisms (e.g. markets, taxes, technology, direct regulation, geoengineering), on what normative criteria, and so forth. Should the states be acting? Should you buy personal carbon offsets? Should the US join Kyoto, or organize a parallel regime of major emitters, or do something else? We will also ask more speculative (and possibly optimistic) questions. What principles of international and intergenerational justice should guide efforts to control climate change? How should concern for overall social well-being, and for the world’s poor, influence climate change policy? How will coming changes in world geopolitics, such as a shift from the US as lone superpower to a more multipolar world of several great powers, affect climate change policy? Alongside its threats and challenges, what opportunities might climate change provide to legal and political order? Students will participate in class discussion and write reaction/comment papers throughout the semester, and may complete research papers for extra credit. This course may be used to satisfy the writing requirement if a research paper is written.
Offered in Spring semester Only
During the Fall 2008-Spring 2009 academic year, this course will only be offered in Spring 2009 for 2 credits.
(this course was taught as a year-long course in 2007-2008.)
Please note that course organization and content may vary substantially from semester to semester and descriptions are not necessarily professor specific. Please contact the instructor directly if you have particular course-related questions.
Sections/Instructors
Jonathan B. Wiener
Climate Change and the Law 520.01
Spring 2010