Law for an ecological civilization

The call by Chinese environmentalists for an ecological civilization to supersede industrial civilization, subsequently embraced by the Chinese government and now being promoted throughout the world, requires a fundamental rethinking of the role of law in society. If governments are going to prevent ecological destruction then law will be essential to this, yet law as it has developed in the West, particularly in Anglophone countries, is in a state of crisis. To overcome the deficiencies in the theory and practice of law in so-called ‘liberal democracies’ it will be necessary to revive the philosophies of law associated with the ‘Radical Enlightenment.’ While having developed in Europe, this was influenced by Chinese thought. It is this tradition, it will be argued here, that can provide the legal foundations for an ecological civilization. Overcoming the deficiencies in the theory and practice of ‘liberal legalism’ through the revival and development of the notion of law associated with the Radical Enlightenment should be seen as part of the process of creating an ecological civilization. Before going on to consider how the ideas of the Radical Enlightenment need to be developed in order to support and function as part of an ecological civilization I will first sketch the history of law to highlight the challenge to liberal legalism posed by the Radical Enlightenment. This requires some analysis of the origin of law to see how the specialized institutions of law, which were originally associated with the rise of hierarchically organized societies, came to be understood by the Athenian Greeks and then the Republican Romans as the essence of their liberty, a view revived with the Renaissance in Italy in the fifteenth century.