Why Environmental Law Has Failed: Why Now Is the Time to Recognize the Rights of Nature

South African attorney Cormac Cullinan and Thomas Linzey of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) will speak on the need to recognize the inherent rights of natural ecosystems in order to bring about systemic change in the field of environmental law. Cullinan will address the pressing need to build a new legal structure predicated on the acknowledgment that nature possesses intrinsic rights. Linzey will explain CELDF’s work that involves encouraging municipal governments to adopt local laws that recognize legally enforceable rights of ecosystems. As Linzey describes it, this new paradigm represents “the beginning of a new kind of environmental law – one that is based on the rights of nature, rather than on an environmental regulatory system aimed at merely managing the rate at which we destroy natural communities and ecosystems.”

Cullinan manages EnAct International and works for the law firm of Winstanley and Cullinan in Cape Town, South Africa. Linzey is the co-founder and executive director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit public interest law firm that assists communities to assert local governing authority over corporations. This event is free of charge and open to the public.

Sponsor: Center on Corporations, Law & Society, Seattle University School of Law

When:    Monday, April 16, 2007 (1 PM - 2 PM)

Where:   Sullivan Hall (Room C-1)   

Contact: Rebecca Parker, parkerr@seattleu.edu, 398-4282RSVP:    

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The public is welcome to attend this event.               

The press is welcome to attend this event.