Law in Contemporary Society

View   r12  >  r11  ...
DevinMcDougallFirstPaper 12 - 15 Mar 2010 - Main.DevinMcDougall
Line: 1 to 1
 
META TOPICPARENT name="FirstPaper"

Climate Change, Lawyers and the Creed of Expertise

Line: 24 to 24
 

III. A strategy: Climate change and the creed of expertise

Changed:
<
<		Lawyers can zealously represent the interests of those seeking stronger climate policies in the United States through mobilizing the motifs of the creed of expertise. The political economy of the United States is quite friendly to business interests, but the creed of expertise represents a potentially countervailing source of legitimacy. This is well understood by major environmental advocacy groups, who almost invariably couch their appeals in the terminology of science, rather than morals.
>
>		Lawyers can zealously represent the interests of those seeking stronger climate policies in the United States through mobilizing the motifs of the creed of expertise. The political economy of the United States is quite friendly to business interests, but the creed of expertise represents a potentially countervailing source of legitimacy. This is well understood by major environmental advocacy groups, who almost invariably couch their appeals in the terminology of science, rather than morals or politics. As Damon Moglen, Global Warming Campaign Director for Greenpeace, put it in a recent interview: "Our position is that we have to listen to the science, not the politics."
 It can be difficult to tease lessons out of the contingency of the past, but the 2007 Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA represents an instance in which expertise-based appeals found a way through the byzantine pathways of the federal administrative state and achieved a highly consequential victory for stronger climate policies.

Revision 12r12 - 15 Mar 2010 - 03:00:22 - DevinMcDougall
Revision 11r11 - 10 Mar 2010 - 14:10:10 - DevinMcDougall
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
Syndicate this site RSSATOM