Developing Environmental Agents of Change Within the Core Legal Curriculum

TY - CHAP

T1 - Developing Environmental Agents of Change Within the Core Legal Curriculum

AU - Whittaker, Sean

AU - Ross, Andrea

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2026 selection and editorial matter, Richard Grimes, Stephen Levett, Rebecca Samaras and Rebecca Williams; individual chapters, the contributors.

PY - 2025/9/23

Y1 - 2025/9/23

N2 - In light of the ongoing environmental and climate crisis, with its wide-ranging negative impacts across all facets of society, introducing an environmentally-informed critical pedagogy into legal teaching has increased in importance. With the cross-cutting impacts of this crisis becoming more evident, law graduates are finding that employers are looking for them to apply their legal knowledge and skills to environmental issues. Going beyond the needs of employers, legal education also needs to enhance graduates’ ability to engage with environmental issues in order to challenge unsustainable practices that have caused, and continue to perpetuate, the ongoing environmental crisis. In this way, there is an impetus on law lecturers, and law schools more generally, to integrate and environmentally-informed critical pedagogy into its law curriculum - both to prepare students for their professional careers and to enable them to step up and become engaged environmental citizens. This chapter advances the argument that legal education needs to adopt a critical environmental pedagogy across core legal subjects. This chapter first sets out the theoretical basis for developing agents of change, based on the works of Freire and Egan-Simon, and the justification for adopting this critical pedagogy within legal education. This chapter then considers how this critical pedagogy can be integrated across a range of core legal subjects, providing real-world examples for lecturers seeking to alter how they teach law in light of the current environmental crisis.

AB - In light of the ongoing environmental and climate crisis, with its wide-ranging negative impacts across all facets of society, introducing an environmentally-informed critical pedagogy into legal teaching has increased in importance. With the cross-cutting impacts of this crisis becoming more evident, law graduates are finding that employers are looking for them to apply their legal knowledge and skills to environmental issues. Going beyond the needs of employers, legal education also needs to enhance graduates’ ability to engage with environmental issues in order to challenge unsustainable practices that have caused, and continue to perpetuate, the ongoing environmental crisis. In this way, there is an impetus on law lecturers, and law schools more generally, to integrate and environmentally-informed critical pedagogy into its law curriculum - both to prepare students for their professional careers and to enable them to step up and become engaged environmental citizens. This chapter advances the argument that legal education needs to adopt a critical environmental pedagogy across core legal subjects. This chapter first sets out the theoretical basis for developing agents of change, based on the works of Freire and Egan-Simon, and the justification for adopting this critical pedagogy within legal education. This chapter then considers how this critical pedagogy can be integrated across a range of core legal subjects, providing real-world examples for lecturers seeking to alter how they teach law in light of the current environmental crisis.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105019115497

U2 - 10.4324/9781003505006-8

DO - 10.4324/9781003505006-8

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:105019115497

SN - 9781032820477

T3 - Legal Pedagogy

SP - 84

EP - 96

BT - Teaching and Learning Climate and Environmental Justice in Law Schools

A2 - Grimes, Richard

A2 - Levett, Stephen

A2 - Samaras, Rebecca

A2 - Samaras, Rebecca

PB - Taylor and Francis - Balkema

CY - London

ER -