Ecology and law as forces for social change: the march towards an ecologically legal government

Abstract

The paper sets out from the postulate that all human progress is to be understood as a necessary developing of a universal order in which mankind is inmersed as himself and as a closely integrated part of the world that surrounds him (Nature), both aspects thus forming an indivisible whole that gives being to the above-mentioned universal order. It is felt that technical, scientific and economic progress has brought with it not only disorder but irreversible damage to man's natural habitat and thus to himself. As a consequence, it is argued, within this natural order, there is now a fundamental conflict as to its subject matter as between free persons at liberty to contract and set up legal relationships with others such and the legal standing of other goods and beings (the rest of this universal order) to whom such rights are not granted within the scope of the present day subjective and man-centred laws in force. The paper therefore suggests that within the limits of a warrantable development that it terms 'ecocentric', that there should be an overall reconsideration of the legal inter-relationships within the social Legal State that would endow Nature as such with legal rights, this on the basis of such ecological principles and categories as would give rise to an Ecologically Law Abiding State, the postulates of which, the paper also contains.