The Anthropocene Judgments Project Futureproofing the Common Law

This book is a collection of speculative judgments that, along with accompanying commentaries, pursue a novel enquiry into how judges might respond to the formidable and planetary-scaled challenges of the Anthropocene.

The book?s contributors ?from Australia, Asia, Europe, and the United Kingdom ?take up a range of issues: including multispecies justice, the challenges of intergenerational justice, dimensions of postcolonial justice, the potential contribution of AI platforms to the judgment process, and the future of judging and law in and beyond the Anthropocene. The project takes its inspiration from existing critical judgment projects. It is, however, thoroughly interdisciplinary. In anticipating future scenarios, and designing or adapting legal principles to respond to them, the book?s contributors have been assisted by climate scientists with expertise in future modelling; they have benefitted from the experience of fiction writers in future worldbuilding; and they have incorporated elements of the future worlds depicted in various texts of speculative fiction and artworks. The judgments are, of necessity, speculative and hypothetical in their subject matter. Thus, taken together, they constitute a collaborative experiment in creating the inclusive and radical imaginaries of the future common law.

The Anthropocene Judgments Project will appeal to critical and sociolegal academics, scholars in the environmental humanities, environmental lawyers, students, and others with interests in the pressing issues of ecology, multispecies justice, climate change, the intersection of AI platforms and the law, and the future of law in the Anthropocene.

List of Contributors x

Acknowledgements xvii

1 Judging the Future and the Future of Judging: The Anthropocene Judgments Project 1

NICOLE ROGERS

PART I

Multispecies Justice 17

2 Takayna/Tarkine and the EPBC Act: From Heritage Frameworks to Habitat Thinking 19

BRAD JESSUP AND CHRISTINE PARKER

3 Are Nonhuman Animals Entitled to Dignity, Privacy, and Non- Exploitation?: A Smart Dairy Farm of the Future 39

NATALIA SZABLEWSKA AND CLARA MANCINI

4 The Sea Casts Its Net of Justice Wide: A Speculative Judgment for What Has Been Left to the Waters of Despair 59

FOLUKE I ADEBISI

5 Swan by Her Litigation Representative Bella Donna of the Champions v Administrative Algorithmic Transformer and Minister for Immigration and Border Protection 72

ANDRE DAO

PART II

Intergenerational Justice 83

6 The Doctrine of Quantum Entanglement 85

KATE GALLOWAY

7 The Case of Young People v Government of Ireland 101

AOIFE DALY AND ORLA KELLEHER

8 The Truth and Reparations Commission: Climate Reparations for the Anthropocene 117

ZOE NAY AND JULIA DEHM

9 How to Blow Up a Coalmine: The Trial of the Waratah 7 134

NICOLE ROGERS

10 Piccadilly Circus Water Lilies: A Judgment on Participation and Place Experience in Future Planning Decisions 149

CHIARA ARMENI

PART III

Postcolonial Justice 165

11 The Problem with Cooperative Action Problems: Conceptions of Agency and the Understanding of Environmental Crises 167

OSCAR DAVIS, BINDI BENNETT, AND KELLY MENZEL

12 A Voice, Truth and Treaty Thought Experiment 177

ROBERT CUNNINGHAM

13 The Disillusion of International Law 195

JO BIRD AND GRETA BIRD

14 Imagining Ecocentric Bioregional Law in Australia 209

MICHELLE MALONEY

15 A Bleak Future Beckons Climate Refugees 225

AYESHA RIAZ

PART IV

After the Anthropocene 241

16 How Will 2050 Forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Judge the Anthropocene? 243

TANIA SOURDIN AND CHATGPT

17 After the Law 259

ELENA CIRKOVIC

18 Former People of Planet Earth v the World Corporate Alliance 273

SUSAN BIRD AND MARK BRADY

19 More-Than-Human Relations on the Third Rock from the Sun 286

MICHELLE LIM

Index 301

Nicole Rogers is Professor of Law at Bond University, Australia.

Michelle Maloney is Co-Founder and National Convenor of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance.