What would it mean to reimagine the courtroom from the perspective of more-than-human life? The Courts of the Living Competition invites law students to step into ecological conflicts, arguing how legal paradigms might be reshaped so law can create the conditions for all life to flourish. Informed by the Sundarbans, the competition finals will take place in Kolkata in February, 2027.
Raising the bar for coexistence
Law is one of the most powerful instruments through which societies resolve their deepest conflicts. Law, however, also plays a role in the fractured relationship between humans and more-than-humans, a cataclysmic disturbance that falls hardest on the most vulnerable forms of more-than-human life, and on the communities of people who live closest to them. Courts of the Living is built as a response, asking future lawyers to open a new ground where legal reasoning and ecological reality can meet in transformative ways.
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