The social life of plants and trees and the limits of environmental law’s recovery imagination

In The Natural Contract,1 and also Biogea,2 Michel Serres inspires a critique of the social contract that has underpinned concepts like that of the nation-state, and also law and jurisprudence more generally.3 Being wide-ranging in its scope and allegorical in style, Serres’ work develops the idea that a rational order of any kind emerging from human politics has potential to do violence to objects, matter or nature because of the way that our concepts, language and power prioritise human concern.4 He explores ways in which language, concepts, knowledge and other human artefacts capture the world and restrict how we engage with matter.5...