CLIMATE LAW EDUCATION AND ITS PLACE IN CANADIAN LAW SCHOOLS.

• Author: Chen, Ling

1. INTRODUCTION 2 II. THE DIVERSITY OF CLIMATE LAW EDUCATION 8 A. The Content of Teaching and Learning 8 B. Pedagogical Approaches and Experiments 10 C. Reflection and Imagination 13 III. THE EMERGING DISTINCTIVE CLIMATE LAW 14 A. Climate Law's Content and Progress 15 B. A Community of Climate Lawyers 18 IV. CLIMATE LAW, CLIMATIZATION, AND LEGAL EDUCATION 21 A. Climate Law and Legal Fields 23 B. Practical Consideration for Curricular Arrangements 26 V. CLIMATE LAW AS A SITE FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY TEACHING AND LEARNING 27 VI. CONCLUSION 31 I. INTRODUCTION

   Climate change has complex and wide-ranging impacts on ecosystems, and social and economic orders. It has a polycentric nature because it is caused by human activities across various jurisdictions and sectors and has multi-scalar and differentiated consequences. There are limitations to our understanding of its future impacts. Alongside its socio-political controversies is its legally disruptive force, causing problems that existing legal institutions cannot easily address. A multitude of legal disputes can arise and need adjudication. Case law, regulatory strategy, and legislation require changes and innovations. (1) Given this complexity, a wide variety of interests and endeavors have emerged to explain climate law's diverse legalities and practices.

   Take "transnational" climate law as an example. It is a broader concept than "international" climate law and captures all climate-related legal norms that have horizontal effects across borders, such as government regulations and private standards. (2) This transnational approach may cope with the additional scientific complexity of regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) sources that have transboundary and long-term effects. (3) Research shows that pluralist transnational or polycentric perspectives, (4) which depart from state-driven legal processes, (5) can significantly engage non-state actors and increase flexibility and opportunities for policy and legal experimentation. (6) On the other hand, discerning and recognizing the legal relevance and contribution of the multiplicity of soft law and private sector initiatives, while "avoiding becoming overtly descriptive and losing the normative focus," has brought unprecedented theoretical and methodological challenges to climate law studies. (7)

   Law schools occupy a central role in producing knowledge and fostering expertise. (8) Academics make sense of, communicate, and sustain climate law. Besides influencing this field with their scholarship, law schools and academics teach and mentor students who will shape the future development of climate law. (9) A growing body of literature reflects on climate law teaching, including its status worldwide and in individual schools. (10) This Article aims to enrich these reflections by focusing on Canada, providing a case study of where climate law can belong in a specific jurisdiction's legal education. The reasons for choosing Canada are threefold. First, Canada's experience has been overlooked, (11) even though some Canadian law schools were among the earliest to teach climate law. (12) Second, recent years have seen a significant increase in climate law course offerings (whose central theme is climate change). Among Canada's twenty-four law schools, only Dalhousie University (Dalhousie), Universite Laval (Laval), and the University of Toronto provided semester-long courses in the 2018-19 academic year. (13) In the following year, a first-year thematic course, Climate Change and Legal Change, was on the curriculum of the University of Ottawa (uOttawa). (14) In 2020-21, the University of Windsor (Windsor) launched a clinical program focused on climate litigation, the University of British Columbia (UBC) introduced an Indigenous Law and Climate Change seminar, and Queen's University (Queen's) added an International Climate Law course. (15) The newest developments came from another five schools in 2021-23. (l6) Scholars connect the rise in climate law education to prominent historical events. (17) 2019 marked the start of global movements led by youth and students to demand climate action. (18) As part of those movements, law students expect no less of their schools than to create and improve relevant curricula. Third, my learning experiences at two Canadian schools, which approached climate law very differently, help to connect the patchwork of phenomena and stories from fragmented teaching resources. (19) This contribution emphasizes students' perspectives on learning climate law and differs from the existing literature that predominantly concentrates on teachers' experiences. (20)

   This Article provides an analysis of climate law's place in Canadian legal education by connecting climate law's curricular development to its emergence as a legal field. Part II first presents the current range of ways Canadian law schools introduce climate law to classrooms. There is increased diversity and experimentation in course structures, substances, and approaches. For most law schools, however, climate law teaching is sporadic and insignificant. This synopsis enables a realistic understanding of how climate law is studied and practiced in Canada and informs manageable curricular changes.

   Part III adopts a descriptive account of climate law, highlighting its accomplishments and examining the challenges it faces as a corpus of climate laws, a normative system, and a professional community. Climate law's distinctiveness, which is an emerging status, may explain both the enthusiasm and the reluctance to secure its space in legal education. I argue that Canadian law schools should make climate law more visible and significant. Although keeping up with the field is important, they can also support its improvement, maturation, and transformation.

   Part IV further examines climate law's disciplinary and curricular relationships with other fields of legal study and practice. I describe the potential "climatization" phenomenon in legal education. Using climate law's distance from and connection with environmental law as an example, I demonstrate the challenges of managing this relationship in class. Having a climate law course is straightforward and beneficial. This arrangement can be a focal point for fostering expertise and attentiveness in tackling the legal disruption of climate change, while not preventing more ambitious curricular experiments.

   Since climate law interacts with other systems of knowledge, Part V addresses the need and pathway for a climate law course to facilitate interdisciplinary teaching and learning. It additionally explores how this kind of course contributes to knowledge production in the field of climate change. A conclusion follows to reflect on key takeaways and outstanding questions for future research.

   The recent state of Canada's climate law education is assessed based on course offerings during the 2018-23 academic years found on the web pages of twenty-four Canadian law schools (as of January 2023). (21) Their course lists and descriptions merit studying because they are publicly available and provide information on general curricular development and on a specific course (e.g., its content, teaching and learning format, evaluation methods). (22) Most schools do not make their syllabi accessible to the public; I obtained some syllabi through an online search, and some through my personal network. (23) My analysis reviews select climate law and scholarship, including climate law-related textbooks and teaching materials in and beyond Canada. (24) The data accounts for the development of climate law education in Canada prior to 2018. That said, the schools and data reviewed might not tell the whole story. I use them as illustrative examples to offer a preliminary reflection on what constitutes, and should constitute, a climate law "education" in Canada. This Article can be a backgrounder for those who study climate law, and for those who do not. It can also be a catalyst for sustained reflections on why and how to teach climate law; support for future endeavors in gathering more concrete data on the connection between learning and practicing climate law; and an inspiration for improving and reforming curricular design in this area.

2. THE DIVERSITY OF CLIMATE LAW EDUCATION

   This Part provides a cursory review of the diverse ways Canadian law schools engage and experiment with climate law. Reviewing the knowledge, skillset, and attentiveness fostered in classrooms as well as the character and place of climate law education in Canada supports further inquiry into ways for legal curricula to evolve in rapidly changing climate and legal context, and why this evolution is necessary.

   1. The Content of Teaching and Learning

      Teachings in courses with a comprehensive account of climate law closely relate to the rapid development and scale of climate law, scholarship, and practice. (25) The classes often first introduce the scientific aspect of climate change, occasionally followed by an examination of associated political, economic, and ethical debates. (26) The introductory session is followed by an overview of the international climate regime. featuring key treaties and negotiations. (27) Climate law is also explained from a comparative perspective or the perspectives of national and local contexts where a course is offered. (28) Once general legal frameworks are provided, options for what to teach next are flexible and diverse. Topics could vary from regulatory instruments and sectoral policies to an in-depth study of climate mitigation, adaptation, litigation, and climate justice. (29)

      Some curricular arrangements focus on a specific aspect of climate law or on certain geographic contexts. Windsor experimented with a Climate Litigation and Policy Clinical Project through its Transnational Environmental Law and Policy Clinic; (30) in the clinic, students investigated climate litigation across jurisdictions. (31)...