Wild Law

The second edition of a book first published in 2002, with a foreword by Thomas Berry. If the first edition was sobering, the second is more so, since human development has continued to degrade and destroy the natural resources on which we depend. Moreover, the fundamental drivers of destruction are still intact. However, there is a power in the human spirit to shape the future and alter our course. The book summarises the symptoms of our situation involving ecological overshoot, overconsumption, deteriorating capacity to support life and, ironically, decreasing human well-being. In addition to our inadequate responses, our government systems are based on the false premise that we are separate from the Earth and can flourish even when the health of the Earth itself is deteriorating. The Great Work of Thomas Berry is to establish a benign or mutually enhancing human presence on the planet, and in this respect law and jurisprudence have an important role to play. Traditional societies have a much clearer sense of the universal Way, Dharma or Tao that underlies human formulation of laws. What Cullinan proposes is The Great Jurisprudence and extensions expressed in a viable Earth jurisprudence. Interestingly, this is actually beginning to happen with the adoption in 2008 of a constitution in Ecuador that recognises the rights of nature. Then, more recently, we have the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, which is printed as an appendix. This is a powerful statement that needs to reach the highest levels of law and politics.