1st Edition
Law as if Earth Really Mattered The Wild Law Judgment Project
This book is a collection of judgments drawn from the innovative Wild Law Judgment Project. In participating in the Wild Law Judgment Project, which was inspired by various feminist judgment projects, contributors have creatively reinterpreted judicial decisions from an Earth-centred point of view by rewriting existing judgments, or creating fictional judgments, as wild law. Authors have confronted the specific challenges of aligning existing Western legal systems with Thomas Berry’s philosophy of Earth jurisprudence through judgment writing and rewriting. This book thus opens up judicial decision-making and the common law to critical scrutiny from a wild law or Earth-centred perspective.
Based upon ecocentric rather than human-centred or anthropocentric principles, Earth jurisprudence poses a unique critical challenge to the dominant anthropocentric or human-centred focus and orientation of the common law. The authors interrogate the anthropocentric and property rights assumptions embedded in existing common law by placing Earth and the greater community of life at the centre of their rewritten and hypothetical judgments. Covering areas as diverse as tort law, intellectual property law, criminal law, environmental law, administrative law, international law, native title law and constitutional law, this unique collection provides a valuable tool for practitioners and students who are interested in learning more about the emerging ecological jurisprudence movement. It helps us to see more clearly what a new system of law might look like: one in which Earth really matters.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1 The Wild Law Judgment Project
Nicole Rogers and Michelle Maloney
2 Writing judgments 'wildly'
Justice Brian Preston
PART I Standing and wellbeing of non-human species
3 Green sea turtles by the representative, Meryl Streef v The State of Queensland and the Commonwealth of Australia
Justice Brian Preston
4 Great Barrier Reef v The Australian Federal and State governments and others
Cormac Cullinan
5 The fraught and fishy tale of Lungfish v The State of Queensland
Benedict Coyne
6 Attorney-General (Cth); Ex Rel McKinlay v The Commonwealth
Tom Round
7 Wild negligence: Donoghue v Stevenson
Bee Chen Goh and Tom Round
8 Shaw v McCreary
Edward Mussawir
PART II Mining, climate change and communities
9 Coal mines and wild law: a judgment for the climate
Felicity Deane and Katie Woolaston
10 Quantifying the environmental impact of coal mines: lessons from the Wandoan case, Xstrata Coal Queensland Pty Ltd v Friends of the Earth Brisbane Co-op
Julia Dehm
11 Coast and Country Association of Queensland Inc v Minister for Environment and Heritage protection
Kate Galloway
12 Exploring fundamental legal change through adjacent possibilities: the Newcrest mining case
Aidan Ricketts
13 Metgasco Limited v Minister for Resources and Energy
Cristy Clark
PART III First Nations law
14 Aboriginal laws of the land: surviving fracking, golf courses and drains among other extractive industries
Irene Watson
15 Reimagining Aboriginal land rights: Crown, Country and custodians. Mabo v Queensland (No 2)
Stephen Summerhayes
16 Nuclear waste dump: sovereignty and the Muckaty mob
Greta Bird and Jo Bird
PART IV International law
17 Whaling in the Antarctic (Australia v Japan: New Zealand intervening)
Hope Johnson, Bridget Lewis and Rowena Maguire
18 Restoring the transboundary harm principle in international environmental law: rewriting the judgment in the San Juan River case
Afshin Akhtar-Khavari
PART V Criminal law and environmental activism
19 Stand with Jono: culture-jamming, civil disobedience and corporate regulation in an age of climate change
Matthew Rimmer
20 Magee v Wallace
Susan Bird
21 Duck rescuers and the freedom to protest: Levy v Victoria
Nicole Rogers
PART VI Looking ahead
22 Information environmentalism and biological data: a thought experiment
Robert Cunningham
Index
Biography
Nicole Rogers is based in the School of Law and Justice at Southern Cross University, Australia.
Michelle Maloney is the National Convenor of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance, and teaches Earth jurisprudence at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
