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A Wrong Turn With The Rights Of Nature Movement, Noah M. Sachs

Law Faculty Publications

Environmentalists have long dreamed of granting enforceable legal rights to nature, and their vision has recently become reality. Governments in the United States and abroad are enacting Rights of Nature laws, and many scholars have championed this burgeoning movement as one of the best hopes for preserving the environment.

Legal rights for nature seem visionary, but policymakers and scholars are overlooking considerable problems with this approach. This Article spotlights these problems, including the vague and incoherent content of nature’s rights, the difficulty of defining the boundaries of natural entities, the absence of limiting principles for the rights, and the legislation’s …