A Sense of Place with Landmark Judgments: Anthropogenic Justice, Wildlife Extinction, and Climate Change

Abstract It will be familiar to many that the environmental emergency of our times generates a number of difficulties for our thinking of law and society. It is argued in this essay that the languages of place-making make some sense of these predicaments. The essay proceeds through the close reading of an Extinction Rebellion protest and two landmark judgments. The protests, and their policing, are keyed to specific places and their atmospheres. A first judgment concerns the destruction of habitat and the extinction of native wildlife species; a second concerns the impact of coal mining on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. A sense of place emerges with the aesthetic reason of judgment. The emblems and topics of legal speech, it is argued, give form and technique to the writing of place. A renewed jurisprudence of topography makes legible the meeting places of law and the environmental emergency.