Reading Seminar: Economic and Environmental Constitutionalism with Erin Ferguson

Co-hosted with the Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society, and the Rule of Law (CISRUL), this seminar is part of the series ‘What Is a Constitution? Reading Towards a Problem’.

Building on our earlier reading seminars on environmental constitutionalism and economic constitutionalism, this seminar will examine the connections between the two forms of constitutionalism. We will read and discuss Roderic O’Gorman’s article ‘Environmental Constitutionalism: A Comparative Study’ (2017) 6 Transnational Environmental Law 435.

In our last seminar on environmental constitutionalism, we discussed the global spread of the constitutionalisation of environmental rights. In his article, O’Gorman invites us to critically examine why the states that have not adopted such provisions have declined to do so. He observes that there are a range of contributing factors, including national context, constitutional design, and the perception that environmental constitutionalism is incompatible with economic development.

The following questions can help to get us started in our discussion:

1. How does O’Gorman define environmental constitutionalism?
2. What has been the role of civil society in facilitating the global spread of environmental constitutionalism?
3. Is environmental constitutionalism necessarily incompatible with economic development?
4. What do you make of O’Gorman’s observation that the common law model of governance is resistant to environmental constitutionalism (section 5.3)? What might be the reasons for this?