The Critical Functions of Scholarship in Climate Law

Abstract

What are we trying to achieve through our scholarship? It appears that most scholarship in climate law seeks to describe ongoing developments by using, inter alia, doctrinal and comparative methodologies. This article argues that, in addition to these ‘mainstream’ scholarly interventions, a critical scholarship in climate law should be, and is, developing. By questioning the assumptions on which climate law is developed, assessing the relations between law and power, or revealing long-overlooked paradoxes, among other topics, critical scholarship broadly conceived could provide innovative and interesting insights that help to achieve a more complete understanding of climate law.