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Finchett-Maddock, Lucy --- "Speculative entropy: dynamism, hyperchaos and the fourth dimension in environmental law practice" [2017] ELECD 1446; in Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Andreas; Brooks, Victoria (eds), "Research Methods in Environmental Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 104

Book Title: Research Methods in Environmental Law

Editor(s): Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Andreas; Brooks, Victoria

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784712563

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Speculative entropy: dynamism, hyperchaos and the fourth dimension in environmental law practice

Author(s): Finchett-Maddock, Lucy

Number of pages: 27

Abstract/Description:

This chapter seeks to approach environmental law education through a ‘speculative’ methodology of entropy in environmental law practice. It is suggested that entropy as the basis of a theory of ‘complexity’ is helpful in teaching environmental law, accounting for the complex myriad of relations between humans, non-humans and their environment, as well as relations and rights that we are yet to understand. Processes of entropy are speculative as they take in to account the dynamism and preponderance of chaos, uncertainty (‘hyperchaos’) and the unknown within and outside law and its surrounding environment. This is important in teaching environmental law, given the ever-changing and interconnected nature of the world around us. A speculative understanding of entropy therefore is argued as supporting both understandings of linear and nonlinear time, or in forms that we may not even have the words as yet to describe, thus placing understandings of space and time at the heart of environmental legal education and practice. Clinical legal education is presented as offering new possibilities of speculative environmental law practice that account for a speculative understanding of entropy, using the pedagogies of ‘Skill City’ and ‘Walking the Lawscape’ as illustrative examples.