By the Planet, for the Planet: How To Formulate the Law in the Grammar of Nature
This article is part of a series, in collaboration with the Civic Paths working group at the University of Southern California.
"Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical," wrote the philosopher and statesman Michel de Montaigne in 1569. "Our lawsuits spring only from debate over the interpretation of the laws, and most of our wars from the inability to express clearly the conventions and treaties of agreement of princes. How many quarrels, and how important, have been produced in the world by doubt of the meaning of that syllable Hoc!"
Although grammar is not the only cause of hardship in our world, Montaigne’s statement will surely resonate with anyone witnessing the discord pervading contemporary politics and law.
Might bad grammar also be a root cause of the environmental crisis threatening human civilization and unsettling all life on Earth? Might the linguistic structure of our laws — ordering the world in our image by reflecting and reinforcing human-centered thinking — lead to the environmental injustices underlying the sixth mass extinction?
Most laws are biased in favor of humans, and many are intentionally written with extreme prejudice against other animals and plants.
It is self-evident that most laws are biased in favor of humans, and many are intentionally written with extreme prejudice against other animals and plants. What even the most ardent environmentalists might overlook is the fact that any law written in a human language is laden with human assumptions about relationships concerning all species.
At a structural level, all law asserts human interest.
We need to overcome the systemic bias against non-human species that is embedded in the world’s statutory laws and constitutions — as well as treaties between nation-states — in order to ensure that the planet is governed fairly to benefit all who live on it.
We need to begin with a scientific survey of the laws of nature governing the cycles and symbioses found in living systems such as forests and oceans. The relationships should be analyzed and formally represented in a grammar that is compatible with field observations of collective self-regulation in healthy ecosystems, and that is capable of communicating all observed interactions. This grammar may require configurations of subject and predicate that have never been uttered in a statehouse or a court of law (or even a scientific journal). More deeply, the grammatical restructuring may upset simplistic logical constructs that humans use by default, such as isolated relationships between cause and effect.
In fact, the written and spoken languages of humans will likely be found inadequate to the task of representing the agreements that have been negotiated between species in the 3.5 billion years of life on Earth, and that remain the agreed terms of engagement between the majority of species today. Words may become superfluous. The rights and obligations of nature may more readily be expressed in a score or a map or an image, or even a set of objects, since multiple dimensions and levels may need to be expressed simultaneously. And qualities that are unsuited to the hardened rationalism of modern law — such as the expression of emotion — may be deemed essential, given that natural systems are regulated in part by the flow of stress hormones.
A future constitution could take the form of a diagram akin to those charting the carbon cycle. A future law could have the physical embodiment of a dance, and a contract could be a song sung in multiple parts, filled with grief and joy. The landscape could be the constitution of those living on it.
Interspecies legibility of laws meaningful to all will additionally require attentiveness to the myriad ways in which different organisms sense their environment.
In addition to the need for laws to represent and reinforce relationships between all species without linguistically privileging one over the others, laws will need to be accessible to all species so that all species can participate in their making and seek their protection in the courts. Although this ideal is not identical to the requirement that laws have the grammatical capacity to articulate agreements apparent in symbiosis and co-evolution, the formal qualities of natural grammar will inform the mode in which laws are encoded to ensure interspecies intelligibility. Interspecies legibility of laws meaningful to all will additionally require attentiveness to the myriad ways in which different organisms sense their environment.
Once the grammar of nature is established, and suitable modes of communication are developed, the first task will be to rewrite all extant laws and treaties in this new form, so that they can be evaluated by all species.
The translation itself will serve as a first stage of review, because many legal relationships will need to be reconceived in order to be expressible.
The second stage of review will be consensual, achieved by enfranchising all other species and collectively reconsidering covenants and constitutions and tax codes in order to negotiate mutually agreeable terms for life after the Anthropocene.
