GATES Evening talk - Regulating human relationship with nature: role of empirical reality & participatory lawmaking

There is a disjuncture between the traditional narrative of the human-nature relationship in the common law and how that relationship is understood on the basis of empirical evidence offered by natural sciences. The common law (English, judge-made law) discerns human-nature relationship as a relationship of domination and subservience – human mastery over nature. This knowledge of the relationship in the common law tradition has particular significance for normative ordering of property, labour and economic development. In this talk, I argue that the continued authenticity of the common law in socio-ecological ordering of the human-nature relationship is conditional upon its willingness to subject its epistemological foundation to empirical verification.

Subjecting the foundational values of a legal system to external evaluation is an explicitly reconstructive project, which needs to recognize and take seriously the role of expansive participation in making sense of (i.e., interpreting) the scientific principles of human-nature relationship in the practical realities of social complexities, including social inequalities and principles of social justice. I suggest that it is through participatory lawmaking – legislating – that the common law’s archaic foundations could be revised. However, deliberative participation beyond the formal representative institutions is necessary in order to effectively learn from and draw on diverse traditions that are more attuned to the realities of human-nature relationships.

Supriya ROUTH is the Canada Research Chair in Labour Law & Social Justice and an Associate Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, the University of British Columbia in Canada. His research interests include theoretical conceptualizations of work and labour law, workers’ organization initiatives, international labour law, atypical and informal workers in the Global South, and social justice and sustainable human development. Supriya has an internationally-recognized research agenda in labour and employment law with an emphasis on the legal exclusion of the vast majority of non-industrial workers in the Global South. He often engages the disciplines of law, political philosophy, and sociology in his socio-legal research. His research agenda combines empirical investigation with theoretical exploration.


Supported by the GATES project (Grenoble ATtractiveness and ExcellenceS), funded by the French government's Programme d'Investissement Avenir and implemented by ANR France 2030