Earth Law Center Blog

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Welcome to the Wonderful World of Earth Law

Earth law is the emerging body of law that will protect, stabilize, and restore the functional interdependence of Earth's life and life-support systems at the local, bioregional, and global levels. Earth law may be expressed in constitutional, statutory, common law, and customary law, as well as in treaties and other agreements both public and private.

This is the first blog post in a new series, “Advice of Counsel,” by Earth Law Center’s general counsel and director of education, Tony Zelle.

Have you ever met an Earth lawyer? Since attending the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2023, I have been describing myself as an Earth lawyer. During the prior 7 years, I served as chair of the Earth Law Center (ELC) board. With Grant Wilson, ELC’s executive director, Herman Greene, founder of the Center for Ecozoic Studies, and Rachelle Adam, an Earth law practitioner and educator, we conceived of and published the first (and, as of this writing, only) coursebook on the subject of Earth law: Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law—A Guide for Practitioners. I now serve as ELC’s director of education and its general counsel.

My mission as an Earth lawyer and ELC’s education lead is to make Earth law and Earth lawyers. To that end, I invite you to read “Advice of Counsel,” my periodic contribution to Earth Law Center’s blog and newsletter. I also invite you to participate in ELC’s 2024 Summer Class and to ask questions about Earth law at info@earthlaw.org.

To begin our dialogue, I will share my answers to some frequently asked questions. Like the subject of Earth law itself, the answers to these questions are emerging and adapting to the constant changes of Earth and the Earth community. There are few, if any, who consider themselves an authority on the subject of Earth law. While I consider myself a practicing Earth lawyer, an educator, an entrepreneur, and a voice for the voiceless, it is with the utmost humility and gratitude that I share my ideas, which I am always interested in reconsidering.

What is “Earth law”?

Earth law is a practice of law that has sprouted from the principles of “Earth jurisprudence,” a term coined by cultural historian, poet, and geologian Thomas Berry, who is known as the “father of Earth jurisprudence.” The Gaia Foundation is a proponent of its development and explains What You Need To Know. Judith Koonz describes Earth jurisprudence as Key Principles to Transform Law for the Health of the Planet.

How is Earth law different from environmental law?

Environmental law has many definitions. For example, a body of law intended to protect the environment by regulating activities that cause pollution, such as fossil fuel emissions and the dumping of wastes; by prohibiting certain uses of land designated as protected by the landowner or sovereign, e.g., national parks, land conservation trusts; and by providing regimes of protection for endangered species.

Environmental laws that permit pollution and the degradation of Earth and Earth’s life-supporting systems conflict with Earth law principles.

What do “ecocentric” and “anthropocentric” mean?

“Anthropocentric” means centered on human beings.

“Ecocentric” means centered on Earth's ecosphere, which includes the air, water, and land. In scientific terms, the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere comprise the ecosphere. The biosphere is the thin layer of Earth occupied by living organisms.

Earth law looks at anthropocentrism as the centerpoint of a metaphorical sphere held in balance by the relationships of all other life and life-support systems contained within the sphere, the outer perimeter of which is ecocentrism. Ecocentric law seeks to balance these interests. By way of illustration, when a river is the subject of a legal proceeding or legislative action, a purely anthropocentric viewpoint considers only the human needs for the water, such as to drink, use for irrigation of crops, use as a place to discharge waste, and/or conserve for aesthetic and recreational interests. An ecocentric viewpoint considers, in addition to human interests, the role of the river in its ecosystem and the sufficient minimum flows and water quality necessary to protect, stabilize, and/or restore the functional interdependency of the community of life (including human life) and life-support systems that comprise the ecosystem.

How does Earth law relate to the Rights of Nature legal movement?

The terms “rights” and “nature” are both simple to understand and difficult to explain. They are expansive terms that are highly subjective. It is folly to attempt to define them without a context. To understand them in the context of Earth law, one must begin with the understanding that humans are nature. “Nature” may be defined as the world as it presently exists. It includes the human species and all that the human species has created. It is the state of Earth today, which includes human beings and our creations, as well as nonhuman nature, the rest of the Earth community of life and life-sustaining systems. Earth law rejects the ontology of separation, a concept that considers human beings to be above and apart from the web of nature that weaves together all that exists in the Earth community.

The concept of “legal rights” is relatively new in the history of humankind. Before law was defined by rights, it was defined by relationships. While rights-based legal frameworks currently predominate the fabric of law, from the local to the global, Earth law seeks to reinstill concepts of relationality and responsibility in the law and legal systems. Indigenous legalities, from cultures in the Amazon to Aboriginal Australia to Africa to the Americas, are based on relationality and responsibility.

Earth law distinguishes between rights conceived and codified by human beings and the inherent Rights of Nature, which include the rights to exist, to have a habitat, and to evolve as part of the Earth community. In the context of Earth law, “Rights of Nature” are defined by the human laws and legal systems that give nonhuman nature rights or compel nature’s interests to be considered. By way of example, in a judicial proceeding, to assert a legal right or claim protection from the violation of a right depends on “standing.” Standing is not an inherent right of humans or nature. In the United States, it is a right established by the Constitution. When written, the U.S. Constitution limited standing to white men who owned property. While the Supreme Court has extrapolated the constitutional meaning of “standing” to confer this legal right on women and nonhuman beings, such as corporations, government agencies, trusts, and inanimate objects such as ships, there continues to be strong opposition to conferring nature with standing.

In contrast, the constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia recognize both procedural rights (such as standing) and substantive rights of nature that compel judges and lawmakers to consider nature’s interests. “Pachamama” is the term used in these constitutions. Typically translated as “Mother Earth,” in Bolivia, “Pachamama” is defined in law as “a dynamic living system comprising an indivisible community of all living systems and living organisms, interrelated, interdependent and complementary, which share a common destiny.” “Living systems” are defined as “complex and dynamic communities of plants, animals, microorganisms and other beings and their environment, where human communities and the rest of nature interact as a functional unit under the influence of climatic, physiographic, and geological factors, as well as production practices, Bolivian cultural diversity, and the worldviews of nations, original indigenous peoples, and intercultural and Afro-Bolivian communities.”

Constitutional recognition of Rights of Nature in Bolivia and Ecuador are examples of how Earth law relates to the global Rights of Nature movement. They are human laws at the constitutional core of their national legal systems that give nonhuman nature rights and compel nature’s interests to be considered.

In the context of Earth law, what is the role of planetary boundaries?

To determine whether law tends to protect, stabilize, and restore the functional interdependence of Earth's life and life-support systems, there must be criteria for decision-makers to consider. Among these criteria are the planetary boundaries established in 2009 by the Stockholm Resilience Center and dozens of collaborators. The planetary boundaries establish scientifically measurable standards for nine processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth system. They are:

Climate change
Ocean acidification
Stratospheric ozone depletion
Interference with the global phosphorus and nitrogen cycles
Rate of biodiversity loss
Global freshwater use
Land-system change
Aerosol loading
Chemical Pollution

Irrespective of any Rights of Nature that may be recognized by human law, the laws of nature that establish the planetary boundaries will determine the future of the Earth community. The pace of the development of Earth law will accelerate as human laws and legal systems pay increasing attention to the laws of nature.

How is Earth law related to climate change?

The development of Earth law will be an effective means to stem the changes in Earth’s climate, particularly those changes caused by human systems. However, because the law is itself one of those systems, its role in stemming changes in the Earth’s climate has thus far been quite limited. As laws and legal systems become more ecocentric, balancing rights and interests that are exclusively human with the interests of the Earth community, which is essential to support human life, they will more effectively address the causes and consequences of climate change.

How can you contribute to the advancement of Earth Law?

Earth law is for everyone. We are all Earthlings. The world wide web is not just another name for the internet. It is all humankind, along with the flora and fauna of the forests, the oceans, the soils, and the sky. The world wide web is the gift of life and life-sustaining systems we have inherited from Mother Earth and Father Time. To contribute to the advancement of Earth law begins with gratitude. Our book, Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law— A Guide for Practitioners, is dedicated to protect Earth, “in gratitude for the home you provide for us, the sustenance you give us, the magnificent beauty with which you surround us, and for your wondrous diversity of life and life supporting systems.”

This writing of Robin Wall Kimmerer is foundational in the advancement of Earth law. In her essay “Returning the Gift,” she writes:

We are showered every day with the gifts of the Earth, gifts we have neither earned nor paid for: air to breathe, nurturing rain, black soil, berries and honeybees, the tree that became this page, a bag of rice, and the exuberance of a field of goldenrod and asters at full bloom . . . the job of a human person is to learn, “What can I give in return for the gifts of the Earth?”. . .
For much of humans’ time on the planet . . . we lived in cultures that understood the covenant of reciprocity—that for the Earth to stay in balance, for the gifts to continue to flow, we must give back in equal measure for what we are given. Our first responsibility, the most potent offering we possess, is gratitude.

With gratitude, I welcome you to the wonderful world of Earth law and encourage you to wonder. Wonder is an essential element of an Earth lawyer’s practice, as are curiosity and imagination. That is how we can effect change, because we have to conceive the inconceivable and make the impossible possible.

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It’s Time for an Earth Law Textbook

First law textbook on legal movement to establish rights for nature from Earth Law Center. The textbook will be available for university courses and elsewhere. The goal is to train the next generation of rights of nature experts.

By Darlene Lee

Earth Law Center (ELC) is creating the first-ever law textbook on the legal movement to establish rights for nature. While targeted to law schools, the textbook will also be available for university courses and elsewhere. The goal is to train the next generation of rights of nature experts.

Background: A movement to Establish Equal Rights for Nature

Will Falk, lawyer and environmental activist asks, “Which corporation provides drinking water to 40 million Americans?” The answer is not a brand name, it’s the Colorado River – since no corporation provides drinking water to 40 million Americans. Yet despite no corporation being able to equal the life-giving activities of ecosystems, corporations under American law are considered “persons” and ecosystems are not. For the past decade, a growing movement committed to achieving legal rights for nature has sought to change this peculiarity.[i]

So What Exactly is Rights of Nature?

Rights of nature (and related movements) is also referred to as Earth Law, Earth Jurisprudence, and Wild Law.

Environmental attorney and author Cormac Cullinan coined the term Wild Law. In his book, Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice, he explains the rights of nature ethos:

Within the Earth system, the well-being of the planet as a whole is paramount. None of the components of the Earth’s biosphere can survive except within the Earth ecosystem. This means that the well-being of each member of the Earth Community is derived from, and cannot take precedence over, the well-being of Earth as a whole. Accordingly, the first principle of Earth jurisprudence must be to give precedence to the survival, health and prospering of the whole Community over the interests of any individual or human society. Giving effect to this principle is actually also the best way of securing the long-term interests of humans. It is only our failure to appreciate that we are part of the Earth Community has led us to believe and act as if the reverse were true.

Earth Law Center is working with partners to apply rights of nature principles to North American waterways. Some have dubbed this “human rights for rivers,” but rights of persons is a better term. The reason why is explained by David Boyd, author of The Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution That Could Save the World. In conversation on the show Living on Earth, Boyd noted:

And in our western legal systems we’ve recognized the legal rights of non-human persons for many, many years. So, examples include municipalities and corporations that we designate as legal persons, and then through the law we articulate what are the rights of a corporation, for example. So now what’s emerging around the world in terms of the rights of nature are, what are the rights of a river? What are the rights of a chimpanzee? What are the rights of an ecosystem? So, we have to be quite clear in distinguishing human rights, which we’re not talking about, from the rights of legal persons, which we are talking about.[ii]

How Sierra Club v. Morton Paved the Way for Earth Law

The Mineral King Valley, an undeveloped part of the Sequoia National Forest used primarily for mining, attracted the interest of developers in the 1940s. Walt Disney Enterprises won a bid to start surveying the valley in the hopes of developing an 80-acre ski resort. The size of the proposed resort would require the construction of a new highway and massive high voltage power lines that would run through the Sequoia National Forest.

The Sierra Club filed preliminary and permanent injunctions against federal officials to prevent them from granting permits for the development of the Mineral King Valley. Although the district court granted these injunctions, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the injunctions on the grounds that the Sierra Club did not show that it would be directly affected by the actions of the defendants and therefore did not have standing to sue under the Administrative Procedure Act.

At the Supreme Court in Sierra Club v. Morton, Justice William O. Douglas wrote a dissenting opinion in which he argued that the standing doctrine should allow environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club to sue on behalf of inanimate objects such as land. There is precedent for inanimate objects to have legal personality for the purpose of lawsuits, and “[t]hose who have that intimate relation with the inanimate object about to be injured, polluted, or otherwise despoiled are its legitimate spokesmen.” So despite having failed, the case created an important legal distinction. After years of legal battles, the Mineral King Valley was annexed into Sequoia National Park in 1978 and remains undeveloped to this day.

What are the Milestones in the Rights of Nature Movement?

We can gain a greater understanding of rights of nature by looking at its history and how it began. A textbook on rights of nature will be a resource for the understanding of the movement’s development.

The rights of nature movement (in the context of western legal systems) emerged in the 20th century, drawing on the shared worldviews of indigenous peoples around the world. In addition to the impassioned dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton discussed above, there are several important rights of nature milestones in recent years:

In the 1920s and 1930s, scientist and ecologist Aldo Leopold developed his ethics of nature and wildlife preservation. Leopold’s work had a profound impact on the environmental movement. With ecocentric or holistic ethics regarding land, he emphasized biodiversity and ecology.[iii]
Starting in the 1970s, theologian and philosopher Thomas Berry called for the restitution of habitat for biodiversity, not simply as a conservation measure but in recognition of the intrinsic value of nature.[iv]
In her 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson asked the hard questions about whether and why humans have the right to control nature; to decide who lives or dies, to poison or to destroy nonhuman life. In showing that all biological systems are dynamic and by urging the public to question authority, Carson initiated the contemporary environmental movement.[v]
In 1972, Christopher Stone’s seminal article “Should trees have standing – toward legal rights for natural objects” mapped out the first legal argument for rights of nature.[vi] It was published in the Southern California Law Review.
In 1982, over 100 member states of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a “World Charter for Nature”. The Charter formulates general principles and obligations to guide human conduct, laws and practices towards protecting nature. Recognizing the intrinsic value of nature and that humans are part of nature, the Charter calls for humans to be guided by a moral code of conduct that does not compromise the “integrity of those other ecosystems or species with which they coexist.”
In 1989, Professor Roderick Nash published The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics. It was the first comprehensive history of the concept that nature has rights and that American liberalism has, in effect, been extended to the nonhuman world.[vii]
In 2003, South African attorney Cormac Cullinan published Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice. His book shows that the survival of the community of life on Earth (including humans) requires us to go beyond merely changing individual laws. Cullinan argues that we should fundamentally alter our understanding of the nature and purpose of law.”[viii]
In 2008, driven by popular vote, Ecuador became the first country in the world to recognize the rights of nature in its national constitution.[ix]
In 2009, the first UN General Assembly adopted a “Resolution on Harmony with Nature,” launching a dedicated focus on rights of nature within the UN.[x]
In 2011, the Provincial Court of Justice of Loja decided in favor of the plaintiff, the Vilcabamba River, which successfully defended its rights to “exist” and “maintain itself.”[xi]
In 2012, Bolivia's Plurinational Legislative Assembly passed the “Law Under the Mother Earth” which recognizes the rights of Mother Earth in statutory law.[xii]
In 2012, New Zealand’s national government recognized the Whanganui River as a legal person.[xiii]
By 2013, Santa Monica passed a biodiversity ordinance that includes rights of nature. This arose from collaboration with Earth Law Center and other partners.[xiv] Santa Monica became the first West Coast city with a rights of nature law, joining dozens of other municipalities that recognized nature’s rights due to the work of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and others.[xv]
In 2016, Colombia’s Constitutional Court recognized the Atrato River basin as having rights to “protection, conservation, maintenance and restoration.”[xvi]
In the same year, Te Urewera – a national park on New Zealand’s North Island - became a legal entity with “all the rights, powers, duties and liabilities of a legal person.”[xvii]
In 2017, Mount Taranaki on the west coast of North Island gained legal rights in New Zealand.[xviii]
Also in 2017, the new Constitution of Mexico City included rights of nature.[xix]
In 2018, Mexico City passed new legislation granting rights of rivers.

Now is the Time for an Earth Law Legal Textbook

The rights of nature movement has greatly advanced and there are now precedents in its application around the world. A new generation of judges and lawyers in training needs a deeper understanding of rights of nature because the movement is a legal reality in the courtroom.

Earth Law Center aims to create the first ever Earth Law textbook for use in law schools and universities across the United States. The textbook will build on Earth Law Center's years of teaching Earth Law at Vermont Law and other schools.

The team will start by delving into centuries of U.S. case law and other important legal precedents to create a narrative of the legal movement to establish rights for nature.

ELC is currently reaching out to potential publishers and plans to complete the book for Fall 2018.

What Will the Earth Law Legal Textbook Contain?

While still in the early stages of development, the current draft outline includes the following chapters:

A. Standing Background

Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962) (standing to require “such a personal stake ... to assure ... concrete adverseness)
Should Trees Have Standing? (Christopher Stone)
Sierra Club v Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972) (Douglas dissent on ecosystem standing)
Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, 497 U. S. 871, 883-889 (1990)
Recent developments

B. Shortcomings of Modern Environmental Laws:

Endangered Species Act – protecting species only on the brink of extinction (case law examples)
Clean Water Act – the “right to pollute” and other limitations (case law examples)
Other examples

C. Precedent of Rights for Nonhumans

Corporate Rights

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394, 394 [headnote] (1886)
Connecticut Gen. Life Ins. Co. v. Johnson, 303 U.S. 77, 87 (1938) (Black, J. dissenting: "Corporations have neither race nor color")
Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 558 U.S. ___, 130 S. Ct. 876, 913 (2010) (lifting restrictions on corporations’ independent expenditures on political speech.

Animal Rights

Tilikum v. Sea World Parks & Entertainment, Inc., 842 F. Supp. 2d 1259 (2012)
Nonhuman Rights Project trilogy (v. Lavery, Presti, & Stanley)

Other

Ships (United States v. Cargo of the Brig Malek Adhel 42 U.S. 210 (1844)

D. Precedents in Decisions About Human Guardianship

Children
Mentally incapacitated
Embryo/unborn child

E. Rights of Specific Ecosystems

Rivers

Holmes, J. in New Jersey v. New York, 283 U.S. 336, 342 (1931): "A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure. It offers a necessity of life that must be rationed among those who have power over it."

Other Ecosystems

F. American Indian Law & Customary Law

G. International / Foreign Rights of Nature Governance

Ecuador

Vilcabamba River case
Other cases (e.g., Galapagos)

Bolivia
New Zealand
Elsewhere (India, Colombia, Mexico, etc.)
United Nations

H. Related Movements

Ecocide
Animal Rights
Rights for Future Generations

I. The Future of Earth Law

How You Can Help

Join the movement and support this crucial initiative!

To volunteer with the textbook project, please click here.

To support the legal textbook, donate here.

If you know of a law school that would like ELC to guest lecture, please email dlee@earthlaw.org.

Click here for more details about our educational programs.

To find out more about ELC, sign up for our newsletter here.

[i] http://willfalk.org/finally-an-american-rights-of-nature-movement/

[ii] http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=17-P13-00046&segmentID=5

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold

[iv] http://thomasberry.org/life-and-thought/about-thomas-berry/introduction

[v] http://www.rachelcarson.org/

[vi] https://www.amazon.com/Should-Trees-Have-Standing-Environment/dp/0199736073

[vii] https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0456.htm

[viii] https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Law-Manifesto-Earth-Justice/dp/1603583777

[ix] https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/ecuador-constitution-grants-nature-rights/

[x] http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/chronology.html

[xi] https://therightsofnature.org/first-ron-case-ecuador/

[xii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_Rights_of_Mother_Earth

[xiii] https://www.parliament.nz/en/get-involved/features/innovative-bill-protects-whanganui-river-with-legal-personhood/

[xiv] https://globalexchange.org/2013/04/11/legalizing-sustainability-santa-monica-recognizes-rights-of-nature/

[xv] https://celdf.org/community-rights/

[xvi] https://www.internationalrivers.org/blogs/433/colombian-river-gains-legal-rights

[xvii] http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2014/0051/latest/DLM6183601.html

[xviii] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/22/new-zealand-gives-mount-taranaki-same-legal-rights-as-a-person

[xix] http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/rightsofnature.html

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Earth Law Clubs at American Universities: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Student activism captures media attention, prompting the public to respond to causes. It can shift the paradigm on climate change and policies that are detrimental to the environment.

University of Michigan:  Teach-In + 50 — University of Michigan: Teach-In + 50

By Melannie Levine

How do you start a movement?

According to entrepreneur Derek Sivers, a movement requires the power of two people. One person dancing is a “lone nut” but with two there is a leader and a follower. When a third person joins in on the growing action, the dancing becomes a crowd. As Sivers says, “a crowd is news.”

If the second person never rises to the occasion, then that lone nut does not become a leader starting a movement [1].

Students and faculty in the 1960s and 1970s across the United States rose to protest numerous lack of rights. Activists campaigned for civil rights, free speech and the rights of women, gay people and African Americans. Student activism also critiqued the United States’ involvement in South African apartheid and the Vietnam War. These movements captured media attention, prompting the public to respond to the causes to which they related.

More recently student activists have been campaigning on issues such as student debt, climate change, gender and racial equality, and sitting political leaders.

Below are a few examples of successful and influential student-led movements in the United States over the last several decades. By thinking about what made these movements successful, we can develop ideas for building the Earth Law movement on campuses across America.

“Question Authority!”

At San Francisco State University (SFSU) students realized that their actions could influence political decisions in the university and the city. However, it was in 1963 that SFSU students could speak openly about current politics on American university campuses - a first for the country.

This advancement in freedom of speech on campus created a place to react to the issues of the following years. Topics enabled for student-led groups, including the Black Students Union and the Third World Liberation Front, to come together for a common cause. The pinnacle of the groups’ collaboration occurred with the suspension of George Murray, a Black Students Union member and Black Panther. Student concern about racial bias and exclusion boiled over with SFSU’s decision, experiencing it as a truly racist action representative of the times [2].

On November 6, 1968, a five-month strike began on the SFSU campus. Seeing that the classroom did not reflect the current political situation, students demanded a change in the curriculum and an increase in the student diversity. Black students didn’t learn about their history or current struggles. Other students did not see their education encompass their own individual ethnicities. Some of the faculty joined the strike as they believed that the concerns raised by the students were valid. They also added their own issues such as renegotiating labor requirements and increasing wages [3].

Both the Black Students Union and the Third World Liberation Front submitted lists of demands to the school’s administration. The students asked the school to pay full-time wages to all full-time professors regardless of skin color; to institute a Bachelor’s Degree in Black Studies; to create a School of Ethnic Studies degree; and to expand the number of non-white students attending the university to full capacity.

On March 20, 1969, the student-led groups and college administration reached an agreement. Not all of the demands were met, but the strikers were appeased by the schools’ proposed resolutions and ceased their protest [2].

This strike set in motion protests both on many other college campuses (University of California Berkeley, for example) and in public spaces. Campaigners highlighted the mistreatment of African Americans and minorities, the country’s actions in the Vietnam War, and other related issues of institutionalized racism.

An Educational Protest

On March 24, 1965 the first “teach-in” took place at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbour Campus – marking the “first large-scale student movement” in the US. The teach-in, coordinated by the student-led group called Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), protested against the Vietnam War. Formed just five years earlier, SDS enjoyed high name, mission and manifesto recognition within two years of its establishment. The group valued “participatory democracy as a political process that would realize civil rights and egalitarianism” [4].

Organized as an all-night affair so as to not disturb the school day, the protesters taught “injustice in political policy” instead of a traditional protest, which might have led to the firing of the involved faculty. This positive protest actually received the university’s approval. Three thousand people attended the “lectures, debates, film viewings, musical performances and workshops, with a large rally to finish off the event the following morning” [4].

Had this teach-in occurred only at the University of Michigan, the coordinators and participants would have been the lone nuts or outliers. Instead, they became leaders that started a movement. On the following day, Columbia University held a similar event. Within a week, 35 schools followed suit, growing to 120 American colleges hosting equivalent teach-ins by the end of the school year, becoming a nationwide phenomenon.

The Power of Cutting Ties

In the late 1990s the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) started to actively encourage college students to intern with them. The Union aimed to garner the enthusiasm, energy, and power of university students, as seen in previous decades, and apply it to improving conditions in the sweatshops that made their schools’ clothing. They figured that if students fought the sweatshop conditions, change would happen faster on both campuses and among the general public [5].

Tico Almedia, the first student to start campaigning against sweatshops, studied at Duke University had been one of UNITE’s summer interns in 1997. Almeida returned to school in the fall to form the student group called Students Against Sweatshops (SAS). SAS asked the university to require companies making school clothing or products to follow a newly created set of standards which created safer and better paid working conditions for sweatshop workers.

With an intensive email campaign and sit-in at the president’s office, SAS members established the forum for a code of conduct to be written and followed by the school’s administration. The new policy included improved wages, benefits, and work-environment conditions, the ability to form a union without repercussion, and the university having the right to check company compliance. Any company found to be violating these terms would have their contract with the school cancelled if they did not comply immediately [6].

Within a year of implementing this code of conduct at Duke University and then Georgetown University, SAS grew so much that it had representatives on over 300 campuses and parent organization, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), established [7].

Students employed various tactics including marches, petitions, showcasing exhibits, teach-ins, sit-ins, speeches, rallies, debates, and onslaughts of email and paper communication to the students, faculty, and administration [5]. The general public also started discussions about sweatshops, which added to the momentum of the cause [8].

Years later, the power of these codes of conducts continued when companies such as Nike and Russell violated the policies, jeopardizing their relationship with the universities [9, 10]. By having the policies in place students have ensured that their schools follow through with the agreement. Students have protested and gone on strike if need be to maintain the morals that they want on their school campuses.

Going Forward: Earth Law Clubs

Students today seem to realize more deeply the critical juncture faced by humanity as the climate continues to warm, species disappear and oceans fill with plastic. The time is ripe for another student-led movement; this time, though, focused on climate change and advocating for the environment’s rights.

The lessons of previous student movements give us the opportunity to build Earth Law activism on a tried and true working system. When we establish Earth Law Clubs on school campuses across the United States, we will be joining a healthy tradition of American student activism.

The lessons of previous student movements:

Lesson #1: Student-led movements work.

Lesson #2: Positive forms of protest (teach-ins, mass communication, exhibits, and so on) gain university’s administration and general public support more effectively than violent demonstrations.

Lesson #3: Student-led movements do not need to originate from students or college campuses but can exponentially expand once students take up the cause.

Lesson #4: Student-led movements take months, if not years, to achieve their desired goals.

Lesson #5: Powerful movements involve many schools, corralling the collective interest and pressure of thousands of students.

Earth Law Club intends to help create a platform where environmental justice and Rights of Nature discussions can occur. We want to include student voices to shift the paradigm of environmental protection from one where humans see nature as a resource to one in which humans see nature as equal partners.

Alicia Follord and Melissa Zajicek recently formed Vermont Law School’s first Earth Law Club. Outreach continues to indigenous groups, law schools, universities, colleagues and local nonprofit organizations to connect student groups already focused on the environment or start their own Earth Law Club.

Working together with other similarly-focused groups, as the Black Students Union and the Third World Liberation Front did at SFSU, will create the momentum to turn individual group aims into a collective movement.

Earth Law Center invites students to intern over the summer and get involved with specific legal initiatives aimed at creating new laws recognizing the Rights of Nature. Earth Law Clubs provide the opportunity for student-led action and participation, whether starting up a new legal initiative or petitioning local governing bodies to incorporate Earth Law for protection of nature.

Interested in volunteering? Email Melannie Levine at mlevine@earthlaw.org. Otherwise, find more information on Earth Law Center’s website.