Higher Education's Response to the Polycrisis

Contributor Roles

Gregg Macey is Director of the Environmental Innovation Center at Lewis & Clark College.

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This essay was written for the American Bar Association's Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources (“SEER”).

A number of factors call for educators to more carefully and comprehensively embed sustainable development within legal education. However, we assess that current efforts fall short. Our assessment is based on the context in which attorneys will practice law, the projected role of climate and sustainability in global legal frameworks, and existing and future global commitments to mitigation, adaptation, and resilience, including those to which the U.S. is a signatory or partner. To venture beyond current national obligations to higher levels of ambition – and greater competency advising individuals, firms, agencies, and other organizations – attorneys will need substantive and methodological knowledge and flexibility that are largely absent from American law school curricula. Many sectors of economic activity are at play; law teaching must be melded in new ways to related disciplines, from architecture and planning to science to economics to engineering. Law schools must impart sufficient tools to monitor, enforce, and adaptively manage laws, regulations, incentives, and other measures, in line with sound scientific principles. The ethics of sustainable development, which includes responsible stewardship of resources, equitable distribution of benefits and burdens, and ecological integrity, demands considerations of justice and equity that have yet to be crafted by legal scholars.

This essay is part of a series prepared by members of the ABA Task Force on Sustainability and Climate Change in Legal Education. Elsewhere in the essay series, we encourage American legal educators to redouble their efforts to embed sustainability within their curricula, courses, and programs. We consider existing approaches to supplement or embed climate and sustainability into legal education. We outline the necessary supportive infrastructure for climate and sustainability education at the university and departmental levels. And we recommend how the American Bar Association and community of legal educators can encourage embedding climate and sustainability in legal education. Time is of the essence to refine our recommendations and establish formal institutional commitments to climate and sustainability at the legal degree, law school, and university-wide levels. To that end, we provide resources on a companion website and commit to continue the conversation through American Bar Association, Association of American Law Schools, and other venues.

First Page

1

Last Page

7

Publication Date

2026

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