Can lawyers save the world?

Around the world, a tribe of activist lawyers dedicate their careers to human rights and the environment, working from inside charities. In European countries, there are healthy numbers of such lawyers for human rights. Not so for the environment. There are, of course, good lawyers in the UK and rest of Europe doing environmental work in the private sector, and some who do pro bono cases. Yet there are few who spend their careers inside environmental groups, wielding the law as a tool to protect people and the planet, to further campaigns and to level the playing field between the powerful and other living beings. That may be about to change.

But step back a minute. Let me take you to lunch with Murray Gell-Mann in the faculty club of CalTech, in Pasadena, California. CalTech is famous for the Nobel laureate scientists on its faculty.

Gell-Mann won his Nobel in physics for figuring out sub-atomic particles. He named the quark. He was also serving as the environmental trustee at the MacArthur Foundation, which gives away the legendary ‘genius grants’. Over his poached salmon, the white-haired Gell-Mann looked up through thick glasses and asked me in a New York accent how I was going to save the...

To view the rest of this article - you must be a paying subscriber and Login