Ecology, Jurisprudence, and Private International Law†

In her new book, The Law’s Ultimate Frontier: Towards an Ecological Jurisprudence—A Global Horizon in Private International Law, Horatia Muir Watt proclaims a new vision of legality: an ecological jurisprudence. Its originality lies in the role played by private international law as a tool for legal and political imagination in the Anthropocene. I first present carefully the whole argument as Muir Watt offers it. Then I turn to a critical examination of the work and show how the book fits a much broader intellectual landscape that aims to do justice to the natural and cultural ‘Other’ and how, despite all its sophistication and erudition, the Levinasian grounds, conflict of law’s genealogy, planetary ontology and amateur bricolage she builds upon to establish a novel jurisprudence raise as many complications as achievements. Ultimately, and as a general lesson for holistic and multidisciplinary theorising about law, this article identifies some crucial choices any future model of legality combining both a theory of justice and a vision of law as a linking device needs to overcome in order to ensure we can deal simultaneously with the divergent local and planetary dimensions summoned by the threat of extinction without hastily replacing morality for law and politics.