Reflections on the Importance of Critical Theory to Teaching Environmental Law

The freedom of students to learn about critical approaches to understanding their world is under sustained political attack. In this time of increasing environmental peril and political dysfunction, Professor Sean M. Kammer reflects upon the importance of critical theory (including Critical Race Theory) to understanding - and ultimately redressing - the related problems of resource scarcity and environmental degradation. While these problems can surely be described in terms of "economic inefficiencies" or "ecological disturbances," as they most often are, they must also be understood (and taught) as problems of colonial exploitation and violence. For example, one cannot understand Justice John Marshall's discovery doctrine or John Locke's labor theory of property, both integral to American property and natural resources law, without scrutinizing the degree to which these doctrines legitimized the conquest and exploitation of Indigenous peoples and lands. Too often, law casebooks obscure or sanitize this history of violence and dispossession. Moreover, even those laws passed to restrict environmental pollution have too often perpetrated colonial logics, most notably in the separation between humans ("Man") and their physical environment ("Nature") and in the occasional embrace of environmental scientism at the expense of Indigenous knowledge. Ultimately, Professor Kammer calls for exposing the colonialist underpinnings of all laws, whether "progressive" or "regresssive." This unveiling is the only way to foster an environment where everyone's perspectives truly matter, which has never been more important.