Theology and Ecology Across the Disciplines: On Care for our Common Home
Description
Book Chapter
Mary Ellen O’Connell & Marie-Claire Klassen, Law for and from the Natural World, in Theology and Ecology Across the Disciplines: On Care for our Common Home 213 (Celia Deane-Drummond & Rebecca Artinian-Kaiser eds., 2018).
Humanity’s earliest attempts to protect the natural world have combine theological, philosophical, scientific, economic and legal concepts. As the 2015 Paris talks on climate change demonstrated, law is currently the most important, readily available means for putting ideas with global impact into action. At the same time, law is only as effective as our commitment to it allows.
This chapter looks at one factor in improving law compliance: the decline of long held assumptions as to why anyone should obey legal rules.
Answers did emerge from outside the legal, field, particularly economics. Economic theory of law, known as “law and economics, “ has become the prevailing legal theory in United States law schools and increasingly beyond the United States.
Theologians once supplied reasons for compliance, as well as the objects and purpose of law. Theology, however, has declined as a source of answers to questions of legal theory. This chapter will show how economic theories of law that prevail today are insufficient to fill theology’s former role.