Climate Law and Climate Ethics

Climate change poses challenges to legal instruments and policy regimes, as well as to the normative values and philosophies that inform them. This seminar involves participants in simultaneously examining responses to climate change from law and from ethics in order to ask questions about the relation of regulatory instruments and moral culture. What pressures does climate change put on that relation? What possibilities are there for mutual exchange and cultural adaptation? Co-taught by a scholar of environmental law and a scholar of environmental ethics, the course is jointly listed in the Law School and the College. This course will introduce students to both domestic and international legal regimes for addressing climate change mitigation, adaptation, and compensation, with an emphasis on United States law and policy. It will also introduce students to major frameworks from ethics, including various theories of responsibility, justice, and virtue. Each week the seminar interprets a set of legal instruments by the light of ideas from climate ethics, and assesses normative theories from the perspective of a legal or regulatory initiative. Students will also be introduced to the underlying science behind climate change, and the ways that science influences both the legal and moral response.