Constitutionalism from a More-than-Human Perspective: Prof Jennifer Nedelsky

Here “constitutionalism” means the framework for co-operating communities that include the more-than human. The nation-state is both too large and too small for optimal earth-centric decision-making. New values of responsibility, freedom, and care become foundational. “Representation” now needs to include more-than-human participants, raising questions about which of the traditional structures of democracy remain valuable. Special protection for core values require forms other than conventional judicial review. Responsibility becomes more important than rights. New approaches to property, to work and care, to economic equality, to security, and to individual responsibility are necessary to foster core values of the new constitutionalism. Both spiritual and secular language are important to capture the intrinsic value of “all our relations.”

Jennifer Nedelsky is a Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. She was previously Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Toronto and Professorial Fellow at the Institute for Social Justice, Sydney, Australia. Her teaching and scholarship have been concentrated on Feminist Theory, Legal Theory, American Constitutional History and Interpretation, and Comparative Constitutionalism.

In addition to her book, Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism, she has published numerous articles in these areas. She is co-editor with Ronald Beiner of Judgment, Imagination and Politics: Themes From Kant and Arendt (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), and is at work on a book Human Rights and Judgment: A Relational Approach to be published by Oxford University Press. Her book, Law’s Relations: A Relational Theory of Self, Autonomy, and Law (2011) won the C.B. Macpherson Prize, awarded by the Canadian Political Science Association. Her latest book is jointly authored (with Tom Malleson), Part Time for All: A Care Manifesto, Oxford University Press, 2023.

Jonathan Herring is the DW Wolf-Clarendon Fellow in Law at Exeter College and Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. He has written extensively on issues around family law, medical law and ethics, care law, and criminal law.