Law and the Humanities in a Time of Climate Change

The essay addresses the climate change-migration connection by adopting a cross-disciplinary approach. In order to capture the interrelations between climate change, mobility and the law, it resorts to biblical quotations and to a non-fictional literary genre (i.e., the climate-change pop-science) prompted by the insurgent ecological crisis. The critical legal approach is complemented by the legal theorical perspective, which examines how climate change affects the bonds of political communities and the legitimacy of political authority. It also explores how the use of ‘strategic formalism’ shapes our approach to migration and climate change. Against this background, the essay argues that there are also possibilities and perspectives. The non-fictional texts reflect the ideas of the most active forces within society, and fuel dynamism when it comes to tackling the ecological crisis. In a time of climate-induced migration, these forces stir formalism in climate-change studies; in so doing, they make the law act as a bridge linking our troubled reality to an inclusive future.