BIOPATH Dialogue, a series of recurring, digital, seminars for Mistra BIOPATH members.
Han Somsen, Professor of Environmental Law, Lund University and BIOPATH WP3 member
On 3 October, 11:00 CET, we will listen to a talk by BIOPATH WP3 member Han Somsen, Professor of Environmental Law at Lund University.
Towards a Geo-Constitutional Legal Order – a Reform Agenda
The starting point of this talk is that the biodiversity crisis is the unavoidable consequence of law’s supremacist claim over nature’s self-regulatory processes. As law students throughout the world learn, ‘the rule of law’ dictates that societies are governed by law, and not by nature, technologies, dictators markets or other regulatory agents. That hierarchy (in the sense that law trumps nature) is a dangerous constitutional fiction, however, as in reality humans depend on nature whereas the reverse does not hold. The ecological crisis reminds us that unless nature’s universal regulatory supremacy over local law is constitutionally acknowledged, there is no future for humans.
A constitution that acknowledges the supremacy of nature’s universal regulatory powers over local law I term ‘Geo-Constitutional’. In an attempt to be as concrete as I possibly can, with regular references to the protection of wolves, I discuss four pillars of a Geo-Constitutional legal order:
The Principle of Supremacy
The Principle of Autonomy
The Principle of Preemption
The Principle of Loyalty
The picture that emerges amounts to an ambitious research agenda that universities are uniquely positioned to pursue.