Performative Environmental Law

TY - JOUR

T1 - Performative Environmental Law

AU - Lees, Emma

AU - Pedersen, Ole Windahl

PY - 2025/1

Y1 - 2025/1

N2 - The Environment Act 2021 is one of the foundational legislative environmental instruments adopted in recent years – in fact it is the first comprehensive piece of environmental legislation adopted in more than 30 years. Despite its potential, this article argues that key parts of the Act display a highly performative nature. Performative is understood as describing the situation where the law expresses a commitment to targets, objectives and aspirations which are in a strict sense legally binding, although they are ultimately hard to formally enforce and take on a highly symbolic or gestural appearance. The article argues that whilst this performativity is a feature of design rather than accident in the Act itself, it is a characteristic which is often found in environmental law more generally even though performativity need not necessarily be a bad thing.

AB - The Environment Act 2021 is one of the foundational legislative environmental instruments adopted in recent years – in fact it is the first comprehensive piece of environmental legislation adopted in more than 30 years. Despite its potential, this article argues that key parts of the Act display a highly performative nature. Performative is understood as describing the situation where the law expresses a commitment to targets, objectives and aspirations which are in a strict sense legally binding, although they are ultimately hard to formally enforce and take on a highly symbolic or gestural appearance. The article argues that whilst this performativity is a feature of design rather than accident in the Act itself, it is a characteristic which is often found in environmental law more generally even though performativity need not necessarily be a bad thing.

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0026-7961

VL - 88

JO - The Modern Law Review

JF - The Modern Law Review

IS - 1

ER -