The law is an institution steeped in human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism, founded and dependent on universal knowledge claims, and wilfully blind to place and contingency in the interests of justice, certainty and predictability.
And yet, it appears that the anthropocene, re-materialization and new governance including collaboration and poly-centrism demand that the law become the opposite of that which it has always been: to do away with human exceptionalism and instead recognize non-human agency and human inter-dependence, to abandon exclusivity for inclusiveness, to reflect biophysical heterogeneity with diversity of treatment, to restructure legal boundaries away from jurisdiction and hierarchy towards nested subsidiarity.
In the 1970s critical legal studies exposed some of the hidden relationships between law and society: the differences between equality of treatment and equity at law, that the law was socially constructed and contingent, and had been long biased towards the powerful. Legal geography has exposed equivalent inter-dependencies between law and geography, and the need also for recognition of currently masked relationships in the interests of more effective governance, particularly in environmental law.
This presentation will look at how law might be reformed both to visibilise current invisibilities and to achieve public policy outcomes. Based on case studies in weeds and pest management it will draw on learning theories to develop a theory of transformative regulation: a regulatory reform approach that draws on the principles of transformative learning.
In addition to the monitoring and evaluation of simpler learning cycles, transformative learning involves the use of multiple knowledges to question assumptions and value-systems.
Transformative regulation inclusive of local, particular and non-human perspectives may lead to laws more appropriate and assist the necessary paradigm shift in law.