Constitutional Environmental Rights and Liberal Democracy

Abstract

This paper examines the case for pursuing ecological ends (including both environmental values and interspecies concerns) by constitutional means. Insofar as ecological values can be assimilated to human interests (and in Hayward (1998) I argue that they can be to a very considerable extent), it is appropriate to incorporate them into a normative theory of the basic institutions of society: this makes it possible to bring them under distributive principles, and, in many cases, to secure their protection by means of rights.

For helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter, the author would like to thank, as well as fellow participants at the 1998 ECPR Workshop: Cecile Fabre, David Miller, Avner de-Shalit, Graham Smith and the participants at the Political Theory Seminar, Nuffield College, Oxford, 1998.