General Design Principles for Resilience and Adaptive Capacity in Legal Systems: Applications to Climate Change Adaptation Law
This Article explores ways to think about designing legal instruments and institutions to be resilient and adaptive to climate change impacts - described as "massive, variable, and long-term." The article reviews resilience theory in a framework relevant to lawyers, and explores general design principles for legal systems.
Part I examines resilience - what it is and how to design for it in legal systems. The normative dimensions of resilience are discussed, and distinctions are made between resilience of legal systems, resilience of laws they produce, and resilience of the other social and natural systems law addresses.
Part II provides the theoretical context and design principles for adaptive capacity, focusing on adaptive management theory as an example for legal design.
Part III suggests applications of these general principles to the challenge of designing law for responding to climate change, arguing that climate change adaptation law should draw from theories of adaptive management, dynamic federalism, new governance, and trans-governmental networks.
Publication Date: October 20, 2010
Author or Affiliated User:
Related Organizations:
- North Carolina Law Review
Resource Category:
Resource Types:
- Legal Analysis
