Law, justice and rights: some implications of a global perspective

In academic life there is a widespread tendency for bodies of literature to talk past each other. This seems to be the case with much of the literature on environmental law, environmental justice, mainstream jurisprudence, and globalisation. This chapter suggests some chasms and some connections between them, and relates to the question: ‘What are the implications of so-called “globalisation” for the institutionalised discipline of law and especially for jurisprudence, conceived as the theoretical or more general part of that discipline?’ I shall reflect on a number of themes, concepts, and distinctions that are broadly relevant to debating issues about environmental justice in today's world: including the nature of theorising about law; the discourses of globalisation; picturing law from a global perspective; normative jurisprudence, especially theories and discourses of justice and human rights. I treat jurisprudence as the theoretical or more abstract part of law as a discipline. Philosophy of law is the most abstract part of jurisprudence, which is also concerned with a wide range of theoretical issues that are not primarily philosophical. Jurisprudence can be conceived of as both a heritage and an activity. Western jurisprudence has a vast heritage of texts, questions, answers, and arguments. It can also be conceived of as an activity directed to posing, reposing, reflecting on, hypothesising answers to, and arguing about these questions