2nd conference of the SNLS: Law and/in the Anthropocene

Bern, 10-12.02.2025

The programme of the 2nd conference of the SNLS is now available here!

General information about the conference

The conference is taking place at the University of Bern, from Monday 10th to Wednesday 12th February 2025 and will provide an opportunity to explore the trajectories of legal developments and responses vis-a-vis the challenges posed by the era that is referred to as the Anthropocene.

The program of the conference will be shared in early December. All participants will kindly be asked to register through this website in order to facilitate the organization of the conference. The registration will be free of charge.

Please note that this will be an on-site event only and that it will not be possible to attend remotely.

Conference format

The conference features three distinct formats: panels, roundtables, and keynotes. Keynote speeches and roundtable discussions each last one hour, while panel sessions are 90 minutes long and organized by the panel convenors.

The welcome apéro will take place on Monday evening, and the SNLS Network discussion will close the conference on Wednesday afternoon.


Conference venue:                                 University of Bern, UniS

Conference dates:                                  10-12.02.2025

Conference Themes

1)  Dilemmas of juridification and democratic politics in the Anthropocene

When political conflicts enter the legal system through lawsuits and litigation, dilemmas arise within democratic processes. Through the juridification of politics, the electoral process and established forms of democratic representation can be circumvented through the courts. At the same time, the courts can act as a counterpower to the other branches of democratic government and allow citizens and social movements to hold more powerful actors or their representatives accountable through legal mobilization, cause lawyering, strategic litigation, etc. The dilemmas of juridification and democratic politics are particularly relevant in the field of environmental conflicts, policy making and politics: with the intensification and growing urgencies of multiple and overlapping socio-ecological crises in the Anthropocene (e.g. climate, biodiversity, water, soil, air), they will arguably only become more pronounced.

This theme invites panel proposals that critically engage with processes of and struggles over juridification in the Anthropocene in order to examine what dilemmas these processes and struggles posit vis-a-vis democratic politics. More specifically, we encourage panels to examine the complex relationship between juridification and democratic politics against the background of intensifying socio- ecological crises: For instance, how do democratic principles become challenged, reinforced, or transformed through juridification, and how does democratic politics limit or promote juridification? What issues arise from juridification of political conflicts and how do different actors address them? How may juridification support or inhibit legal mobilization by social movements? How may juridification promote or prevent the criminalization of environmental activism? Panels that address these or related questions are invited to draw on various traditions in legal and political theory, including

– but not limited to – law, legal anthropology and geography, political ecology, law and political economy.

2)  Rules-based governance in the Anthropocene

Law’s powerful role in private wealth creation and the production of inequalities through the codification of capital has been discussed at length across disciplines. The rules enabling capital accumulation are however changing in the era of the climate crisis. With the long-running privatisation of the state, we have witnessed the rise of new legal and regulatory actors and the emergence of increasingly fragmented legal constellations, partly outside the purview of states. In turn, alongside the surge of regulatory activities by states aiming to make capitalism sustainable, the climate governance regime is becoming increasingly complex. Following these observations, we identify two axes that need further investigation: on the one hand, the development and implementation of rules that address climate change by greening capitalism and, on the other, the conflicts that new and existing rules may raise. This stream thus explores processes of lawmaking, law enforcement, and legal adjudication, including by private actors, and their potential in addressing the climate crisis. It welcomes panels which address the proliferation of these new – and often conflicting – legal constellations, from states’ regulation of emissions and trade to private-led regimes of compliance, or the role of arbitral tribunals in settling environment-related disputes. In studying how various state and non-state actors are together involved in law and rule making, law enforcement and adjudication, panels are also invited to consider the role that legal and regulatory intermediaries play in upholding, creating and enforcing (new) anthropocentric rules for capitalism. Doing so suggests paying attention to power relations and conflict in the translation of private and state-led regulation into concrete practices. For instance, how are “public” and “private” interests constructed, assembled, and hierarchized in hybrid modes of regulation? It can also highlight distributive effects of new and evolving laws and regulations that seek to intervene on the economy in a bid to address the climate crisis.

3)  Critical Perspectives on (New) Rights-Bearing Subjects in the Anthropocene

New subjects of rights are emerging in response to the planetary crisis: the environment, non-human animals and nature. None of these ideas – environmental constitutionalism, animal rights and rights of nature – are completely new, but they are rapidly gaining traction. Today, provisions that recognise ‘the environment’ as a subject for protection exist in the majority of national constitutions. Moreover, fundamental animal rights have been recognised by courts in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador and India, for example. And there are many initiatives across the world aiming to make ‘nature’ as such or so- called ‘natural entities’ like rivers, glaciers, forests or lagoons, to name but a few, holders of subjective rights. This theme calls for panels that engage with these trends, their histories and factors giving rise to their current momentum. It particularly invites panel contributions that, by bringing different disciplinary perspectives and approaches together, look beyond the promises of these legal novelties at their practical implementation, challenges, limits and political effects. Panels that critically engage with the relationship between rights (as entitlements) and obligations as well as the empowering and silencing effects of rights and rights talk – also through comparisons with rights creations and adaptations in other legal domains – would be very welcome, as would critical discussions of the the risks and opportunities of a posthuman turn in law.

4)  The Normative and the Empirical in Socio-legal Research

This theme invites panels that gather contributions on the specific challenges of bringing together empirical-analytical and normative approaches in socio-legal research. In particular it encourages cross- disciplinary panels that engage with transdisciplinary methodological and ethical questions, as well as reflections on disciplinary positionalities, blindspots and priorities. This could include discussions on how we study legal materials such as legal and judicial archives or law in action. Or what methodologies are suitable to grasp changes in legal consciousness? How do legal scholars relate to an empirical perspective in legal scholarship and how might this affect the conception of law in legal scholarship?

Conference Host and Organizing Team

  • Conference host:     Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern
  • Dr. Laura Affolter (Hamburg Institute for Social Research)
  • Lucie Benoit
  • Dr. Jevgeniy Bluwstein
  • Dr. Matthieu Bolay
  • Prof. Julia Eckert
  • Paule Pastré
  • Dr. Kiri Santer

Funding and sponsors

SNSF Ambizione project 208679 (PI Jevgeniy Bluwstein)

SNSF Ambizione project 201748 (PI Matthieu Bolay)

SNSF Scientific Exchange Phil.-Hist. Fakultät Bern

Archive: Call for Abstracts_Law and-in the Anthropocene