What is the purpose of law amid the unprecedented destruction of the conditions for life on Earth? This question arises as we reach the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, confronted with the contrast between, on one hand, unprecedented levels of global warming and the collapse of biodiversity, and on the other, the plateauing of legal measures aimed at protecting living conditions on Earth. Climate change, biodiversity loss, disease, death, economic loss, migration, conflict—everything is interconnected. Ten years after the Paris Agreement, which marked a significant diplomatic, political, civic, and legal push for climate and environmental action, the law—more necessary now than ever—has been weakened. Evidence of this can be seen in how environmental law—the branch of law we could reasonably expect to serve as a safeguard against attacks on living conditions—is being undermined on two fronts.

The legitimacy of environmental law is under attack. “Drill baby drill,” “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history” ¹ , highlight how environmental law is in the crosshairs of those who— in bad faith and under the guise of simplification – not only in the United States but also in Europe and France – respond to the unabashed call against environmental law as a so-called ”unjustified constraint” and “an obstacle to competitiveness,” all to benefit the force that is currently causing the most massive and systematic destruction: extractivism, understood here as the unlimited form of the extractive economy.

The effectiveness of environmental law is being questioned. Whether out of disillusionment or conviction, as the climate and ecological crisis worsens, there is a growing sense of doubt about the ability of environmental law to prevent climate, ecological, and human catastrophes, undermining the substantial body of environmental legislation that has been developed over time. This decline is aggravated by overlapping crises—security, health, climate, social, and democratic—amid efforts to pit goals against one another: ending wars, making ends meet, or saving the planet. 

Dialogue between a lawyer and a philosopher. It is in this context that we must understand the publication of the outcome of a long-running discussion that began several years ago, after COP21, between a lawyer and a philosopher. The original enigma of this dialogue was the need to understand the underlying reasons for the law’s inability to protect Earth’s life-supporting conditions. Its goal was to outline the foundations the law would need to overcome this weakness and confront today’s climate and ecological crises. Far from any legal fix claiming to solve the problem quickly, the goal here was to take the time to question, from a high-level analytical perspective and over a century-long span, the structural changes necessary for environmental law and the most fundamental law to protect what must be protected: humanity in its interdependence with the biosphere and the ongoing story of life on Earth.

Harnessing legal creativity to revitalize the law in response to threats to life on Earth. Given the historic scale of climate and environmental challenges, now is not the time to give up, but to commit to action through the law. A surge of initiatives demonstrates how much society is mobilizing by using the law as a powerful tool. Similar to the post-World War II period for human rights, at a time when humanity and all life on Earth are at risk, the law needs a new impetus.

To achieve this, it is necessary to understand the path that has led environmental law—a branch of law supposedly dedicated to protecting living conditions—to its current plateau, from which it appears that the foundation of environmental law is fundamentally weakened by the absence of a protected core value (I). From this point on, the task of rebuilding becomes feasible by discovering, through a combination of philosophical reasoning and legal analysis, a principle capable of strengthening an improved environmental law, enshrined at the highest fundamental legal level: the habitability principle (II).

I – Understanding how environmental law is capped

To understand how we reached the current limitations of environmental law, it is important to examine the causes, some of which are known (A) and others—certainly the most fundamental—are often ignored (B).

A – The well-known causes

A technical law. Environmental law is an “engineers’ law,” because it’s based on scientific standards, from which it derives part of its legitimacy. However, an excessive tendency to translate scientific concepts—such as biodiversity, greenhouse gases, ecosystem services, and pollutants—into legal terms without explaining their legal context makes the law hard for litigants and authorities, especially judges, to access, understand, and enforce. Additionally, there is a tendency to frame environmental obligations in a formal, accounting-oriented way. For example, the requirement to publish corporate sustainability reports under the 2022 Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which is highly technical and complex, adds to the perception that the law is difficult to comprehend.

A diluted law. Environmental law has become a victim of its own success. From a “fledgling” law, it has transformed into an “omnipresent colossus radiating across all branches of law” ² but shows, in the absence of an overall reading plan, significant signs of disorder. Thus, in cases of environmental damage where administrative, civil, and criminal penalties are incurred for the same acts, the lack of coordination rules creates a risk of unfortunate legal gaps or overlaps ³ . Excessive regulation makes the enforcement of environmental law more cumbersome, which fuels resistance and calls for deregulation.

A fragmented law. Environmental law has become internationalized thanks to human solidarity, with no customs officers to stop pollution at borders. Meanwhile, a complex system of local, national, regional, and international regulations has developed, revealing different types of interdependence among states, public and private actors, and regulatory bodies. However, this system also creates inconsistencies and tensions that hinder the enforcement of environmental laws. Divergent interpretations of common rules have arisen. The Swiss parliament and government have refused to comply with the April 9, 2024, ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of the Swiss Grandmothers, which condemned Switzerland for its inaction on climate change. Swiss officials considered that the efforts their country had already made were sufficient.

An underenforced law. Environmental law, regardless of its nature—imposed, negotiated, or spontaneous—faces inconsistent penalties that depend not only on the applicable rules but also on various unpredictable factors: the competence of the involved parties (victims, lawyers, magistrates), the context of the dispute (severity, location, personalities of the parties). It is also worth noting—whether through negligence or intentional omission—that the environment lacks a dedicated chapter in the French Penal Code, which is one of the major reference codes that nonetheless implicitly reflects our society’s core values. In 2023, the Molins report criticized that, in cases of environmental damage, “judicial responses are unsatisfactory due to their lack of responsiveness and firmness” ⁴ . The same observation applies to the law on classified facilities for environmental protection, despite the theoretical importance of the administrative sanctions enacted. Lenient for some and a legal lottery for others, the penalties for environmental damage, as they are currently enforced, create harmful legal uncertainty.

A disorganized law. The history of environmental law shows that it was created empirically in response to economic, social, and ecological issues, often after disasters, “without the conceptual and methodological foundations necessary for the development of any autonomous discipline” ⁵ . We built the train—pollution, classified facilities, climate, waste, biodiversity—but without the rails and the map to steer it.. In France, the codification ⁶ in 2000 did establish some framework through environmental principles: prevention, precaution, polluter pays, public participation. However, many believed this was not enough, stating that “it would have been necessary to dare to undertake a truly innovative legislative codification” ⁷ , such as by integrating international and European law. What had worked so far had reached its limits because no law can function without a solid foundation. It is therefore understandable why environmental law must “face a barrage of questions that shake it (…) to its core” ⁸ .

The technical, diluted, fragmented, underenforced, and disorganized environmental law, through its history, content, and implementation, is losing legitimacy and effectiveness. There are “blind spots” ⁹ even in environmental doctrine, which, due to the weight of the distinction between public and private law, neglects certain major issues: accounting, taxation, and insurance are just a few examples ¹⁰ . All these characteristics make environmental laws particularly vulnerable to political attacks. In this era of multiple crises, the phenomenon is worsened by a fundamental cause that has been ignored until now: the absence of a clearly identified protected core value.

B – The often-ignored cause: the lack of a core protected value

The law “protects values” and “regulates relationships”. The law is a strong marker supporting the values that human societies have agreed to uphold. According to one author, “to evaluate a normative system, it is necessary to choose a reference value, a meta-norm, against which the system can be measured” ¹¹ . The law thus protects several core values: human dignity, property rights, the integrity of the nation, the state, and public peace, among others. Moreover, in a structured society, the law “regulates relationships” through concepts like obligations, property, and family. The protection of values and the regulation of relationships are deeply interconnected.

The fragility of environmental law revealed by the lack of an identified core value. An axiological perspective on environmental law reveals a “lack of solid conceptual foundation” ¹² that weakens its legitimacy and effectiveness. Unlike other specialized branches of law, which have gradually become independent from the common legal framework while maintaining the strength of their deeply rooted values (such as criminal business law related to criminal law, labour law connected to contract law, intellectual property law tied to property law, etc.), environmental law has been constructed empirically, drawing from numerous branches of law, each of which has been diluted into an indistinct whole. Without roots firmly anchored in a foundational and protective common legal framework, and without a shared meta-value that provides comprehensibility, coherence, meaning, resilience, and solidity, environmental law—confronted with high expectations and criticism—exposes its vulnerability.

Hindered by its weak infrastructure, environmental law faces fundamental paradoxes on three levels.

The existence of environmental law: consensus and dissent. The first paradox concerns the existence of environmental law. On one hand – it should be remembered – there is general agreement on the existence and substance of environmental law. It is recognized at the national, regional, and international levels as a distinct branch of law, with its core principles (prevention, precaution, polluter pays, public information, and participation), its principles (authorisation based approach), and its key concepts (resources, species, ecosystems, habitats, pollution, sustainable development, etc.), its regimes (rights of nature, biodiversity law, pollution and nuisance law, natural resources  law, environmental economic law, rural and cultural environmental law, environmental liability), as well as its institutions (agencies, councils, and commissions). On the other hand, environmental law faces disputes over both its legitimacy and effectiveness: as its legitimacy erodes, it opens the door to deregulation, while its lack of effectiveness breeds disillusionment about its capacity to deliver on its promises.

The relevance of environmental law: progress and regression. A second paradox involves the relevance of environmental law in its ability to regulate human activities related to the environment. On one hand, there is a strong belief that environmental law can serve as a lever to establish a new system where the relationship between humans and all life on Earth is ordered by an alliance focused on health, safety, and the prosperity of their interdependence. On the other hand, environmental laws are targeted in hopes of returning to the old system of competition between humans and all life on Earth. The two opposing visions nevertheless pursue a common goal of serving humanity: one by advancing environmental law, the other by opposing it. In any case, progress and regression highlight the dual nature of environmental law, whose strength is a powerful lever for transformation.

The essence of environmental law: exclusive value and inclusive value. While environmental philosophers have resolved to boldly address questions like “What kind of value the natural world presents?” and “How humans should approach it?”, “environmental lawyers … largely ignored the questions that philosophers were pursuing” ¹³ . The debate, which leans more toward ethics than law, is often polarized between the instrumental value and intrinsic value of the environment. It is reduced to a conflict between opposing systems of relations between humanity and all living things, leading to believe that one of these values should prevail.

Instead of choosing an exclusive value, which is necessarily limited because it is not shared, a useful theory of value protected by environmental law calls for identifying a shared and widely accepted higher value at the intersection of the different visions of humanity reflected in reconciled legal systems. To restore the legitimacy and effectiveness of environmental law and address the challenge that the law can protect more than just humanity—recognizing its interdependencies and encompassing all life on Earth—we need to discover what this core protected value is that supports it.

II – Rebuilding environmental law based on the habitability principle

Overcoming the fundamental fragility of environmental law. As we have seen, the limitations of environmental law are not merely a matter of legal content. Instead, they are the symptom of a deeper weakness in the very infrastructure of environmental law—a cathedral whose deep foundations, in this case the core value it is meant to protect, have never been laid. This lack of supporting force is crucial for understanding both the decline in the legitimacy and effectiveness of environmental law and how easily environmental deregulation is now happening. Deprived of its core value, environmental law is unable to meet the critical challenges of this century.

In the 20th century, societies embraced the principle of dignity to defend human rights against inhumanity. As the 21st century begins, humanity must adopt a protective value that can renew the legitimacy and effectiveness of the law, helping it confront the existential threats of climate and ecological risks. This is the promise of the “habitability principle” (A), which is already emerging and, even unconsciously, guiding environmental law toward a process of overhaul—placing an improved law, in its various aspects, at the top of the hierarchy of rights (B).

A – From the principle of dignity to the habitability principle

In the 20th century: dignity as the foundation of human rights. Humanity has already faced an existential quest for protected values in the past. In the 20th century, in the aftermath of unprecedented barbarities inflicted by humans upon themselves, the community of states decided to unite around a shared fundamental value—human dignity—and to forge a common legal framework that would serve as a bulwark against inhuman acts: human rights law. Human dignity—the philosophical and legal guarantee of an authentically human life—prevailed because of its unifying and prescriptive potential. It can be found in moral philosophy in words of common sense: already in Montaigne—“Every man carries the entire form of human condition” ¹⁴ . In law, where it is “easier to know what we reject than what we desire” ¹⁵ , faced with the shock of dehumanization caused by World War II, “the urgent need was to prohibit a return to inhumanity” ¹⁶ . The Charter of August 8, 1945, establishing the Nuremberg Tribunal, then enshrined a new category of crimes: crimes against humanity. The way was open for the world to acquire a “treasure that must be carefully safeguarded” ¹⁷ : “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” ¹⁸ , an “inviolable” ¹⁹ , “inalienable and sacred” ²⁰ principle, enshrined by the French Constitutional Council as a principle of “constitutional value” ²¹ : dignity. On this subject, the words of Robert Badinter found in the French Constitutional Council’s deliberations say a lot about the importance of naming dignity: “it is good that today, against all the temptations that may arise tomorrow, we enshrine the principle of safeguarding human dignity.” By discovering the fundamental value capable of underpinning human rights, the world in general and the world of law in particular have come together, beyond their differences, to form a common project and propel society into the future. Human rights law, despite attacks from those who claim to see it as a tool of domination and despite the return of the rule of force by those who, in bad faith and with cynicism, do not hesitate to justify the worst crimes in the name of dignity, remains necessary.

Even though it cannot prevent all crimes, human rights law serves as a collective guide that stops us from normalizing inhumane behaviour or forgetting it. That’s why society is better with it than without it. To endure the test of time and the resurgence of barbarism, human rights law has a strong framework that draws its power from an intangible foundation: dignity.

The inventiveness of the law called upon by historical upheavals. What is interesting in the parallel between the foundations of human rights law and environmental law is their relationship to history – or: “how does history call upon the law?” The recognition of dignity was a response to an unimaginable shock, which is exactly what we are facing today with climate and ecological changes. Although there is obviously no direct similarity in content between the ecological crisis and the atrocities of World War II, the common element in both contexts, each in its own century, is the necessity to invoke the inventive forces of law to protect, implicitly, an existential value that was once beyond our reach. Today, in confronting the ecological crisis, we need the same legal ingenuity that was called upon during the civilizational crisis sparked by the crimes committed during World War II.

The revelation of an implicit protected value. In 1945, at the start of the Nuremberg trials, US prosecutor Jackson, who was also a judge on the US Supreme Court, declared that by prosecuting crimes against peace, society condemns conduct that offends “the moral sense of mankind.” These crimes were so severe that our moral and legal conscience could not understand them. They were so damaging, the prosecutor added, that “civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.” Dignity, the foundation of human rights, then served to restore our moral compass, reminding us collectively of what must be protected.

Today, the scope of the climate and ecological crisis, in terms of the upheaval and suffering it causes to humans and non-humans, strikes at the moral sensibilities of humanity. However, so far, humanity does not have a clearly defined legal value that would allow it to respond to the extent of the damage. In a broad and systemic way, we humans are causing harm to the world that could not have been imagined in previous centuries: mortgaging the Earth’s habitability for humanity and other forms of life. We recognize that we are damaging something fundamental, but we lack the words to express and define it within shared law. The challenge is to collectively establish the protected value commensurate with this damage, to create a collective compass that will keep us from losing hope in our humanity, and to enshrine in the marble of the law the non-negotiable value we must uphold to elevate society to meet the challenges of this century. This is what the habitability principle aims to address ²² .

The need for a protected value despite the major attacks it faces today. In the current geopolitical climate, a common objection might be that dignity, failing to prevent the modern tragedy of crimes against humanity, seems powerless and therefore useless. This objection confuses the temporary failure to enforce a principle with its inherent ineffectiveness. It overlooks two distinct roles of dignity as a protected value: its instrumental role in preventing crimes now (dignity as a “tool for action”) and its foundational role in collectively raising awareness beyond moral blindness (dignity as a “sense of sight”). A society that did not recognize dignity as a protected value after the atrocities of World War II would lack the moral clarity needed to see the profound difference between human and inhuman conduct. In this sense, dignity functions as a system of collective moral guidance: it shows everyone the boundaries of humanity, even when it cannot prevent certain powers from crossing them. To conclude from the failure of international action in a specific conflict that human dignity is “powerless and therefore useless” is like saying criminal law is useless because crimes still happen. It’s important to remember that even when hindered, dignity has driven progress: since 1945, it has reshaped global law by underpinning the universal abolition of slavery, the creation of supranational human rights courts, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court. Furthermore, law also works over the long term, with fundamental principles serving as ongoing structural constraints, influencing the political costs of violations and paving the way for future sanctions, even without immediate intervention. While the instrumental role—its practical function—may currently be obstructed by geopolitical realities, its foundational role remains essential for the century ahead. When the hand falters, it’s unfair to blame the eyes or conclude that the sense of sight is useless. Dignity as an accepted value enables us, collectively and openly, to differentiate between the human and the inhuman. It inscribes into the most fundamental stone, collectively and consciously, what constitutes an unacceptable transgression, thereby preventing—not immediate barbarism, which it can only slow—but its moral normalization. Even if it cannot prevent the existence of evil, it at least stops us from trivializing it. Dignity isn’t a shield against every form of violence, but it is a vital part of the very foundation of our legal civilization and its architecture.

When it comes to habitability, we are in a state of global moral blindness, where damaging the conditions for life on Earth is not yet recognized as the absolute harm it truly is. The habitability principle as a protected value does not primarily aim to magically prevent every attack on the environment. Instead, it seeks to help us collectively recognize the fundamental inhumanity of undermining habitability for life, and therefore for ourselves. It establishes the normative foundation necessary for effective action. Just as dignity gradually underpins and structures the protection of individuals despite occasional failures, habitability could serve as the foundation for protecting living conditions through a binding normative framework. From this perspective, how can we define the habitability principle so that it can reshape our legal system’s approach to our relationship with life on Earth?

The foundational discovery of science: the interdependence between humanity and the living world. The ecological and climate crisis highlights the connection between the health of the natural world and the future of human societies. The report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) dated December 17, 2024, dedicated to the “assessment of the interlinkages among biodiversity, water, food and health,” delivers a clear diagnosis: “nature is essential to our very existence,” but it is degrading worldwide due to multiple human factors, to the extent that “continuation of current trends in direct and indirect drivers will result in substantial negative outcomes for biodiversity, water availability and quality, food security and human health” ²³ . Environmental scientists argue that we must respond with profound “economic, demographic, cultural, and technological change.” No law will be sufficient to address the current ecological and climate crisis until the interdependencies between humans and all living things are protected by a legal and moral principle as comprehensive as the principle of dignity. Therefore, it is urgent that humanity recognizes this reality and establishes “common legal boundaries, shared responsibilities, but also accepted differences” ²⁴ to preserve life on Earth. In light of this, the habitability principle emerges, not just as a scientific fact, but as a philosophical concept and an ethical value.

From a philosophical perspective, the concept of habitability helps us go beyond two limits of the traditional view of our relationship with life on Earth.

Moving from separate entities to interdependent relationships. One of the main limitations that habitability seeks to overcome is that, in traditional environmental ethics, the focus was on the intrinsic value of separate entities: species, individuals, and ecosystems. However, this approach has revealed its shortcomings by fostering structural competition between humans and nature. With habitability, we realize that it is primarily the relationships between entities that matter, because it is interdependencies that enable human and non-human life to exist and thrive. If the biosphere is composed of interdependencies, then current environmental law, which mainly emphasizes separate entities, cannot effectively achieve its goals. That’s why it must, like law at its most fundamental level, focus on the relationships between different forms of life.

The ecological crisis is both a crisis of human societies and a crisis of biodiversity, but it is also a crisis of our relationship with living things. Recognizing this helps us move away from dualistic thinking. From this perspective, the first concept of habitability considers the threats to it: threats to habitability should be viewed as threats to the interdependent relationships within the living, especially between humanity and all life on Earth.

The habitability principle, i.e., habitability as a protected core value, is not intended to replace or weaken existing environmental law concepts—such as species, protected environments, and others—or their core principles, including prevention, precaution, the polluter pays principle, and public participation. Instead, it seeks to provide a broad normative foundation for these principles at the most fundamental level of the legal hierarchy, just as dignity underpins and strengthens the legal framework of the manifold human rights—such as the right to life and physical integrity, the right not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment, the right to one’s image, and the right to information—which protect the human person.

Moving from an inert and passive environment to active habitability produced by life. The second limitation that the philosophical concept of habitability seeks to address comes from the idea that an environment’s habitability is not simply determined by a list of inert, non-living, and passive parameters, such as a certain level of atmospheric oxygen below which Earth is no longer habitable for humans. This static view, reflected in law through thresholds and levels to be respected, species and spaces to be protected, has shown its limitations. It overlooks the fact that, across various dimensions, habitability is an active phenomenon produced by life. For example, at each local level, it is the ecological interactions between insects, soil fauna, bacteria, and fungi that sustain conditions for the healthy functioning of ecosystems, such as agriculture, and thus the habitability of environments. Habitability is therefore not an inert or passive phenomenon but the result of living activity. That is why the law must protect living organisms in their interactions.

Habitability for life. When we discuss the habitability principle, we often automatically think of it as habitability for humans. This unconscious bias reveals how modern people view their world: as a backdrop of passive objects that serve as a habitat for humans, which they must create or maintain through their actions. This implicit worldview is flawed when compared to the perspective offered by mature scientific ecology: Earth is a planet where it is the daily, ancient activity of life that makes each environment liveable for all forms of life. As writer Richard Powers notes: “That’s the trouble with people, their root problem. Life runs alongside them, unseen. Right here, right next. Creating the soil. Cycling water. Trading in nutrients. Making weather. Building atmosphere. Feeding and curing and sheltering more kinds of creatures than people know how to count” ²⁵ . Habitability is never automatically present but always a product of a process. And it is not mainly created by humans; rather, it is primarily built by the interconnected activity of life—for life. We have viewed the living world as a mere background when, in fact, it is an active builder.

In this approach, what is named and valued here is habitability for life. It recognizes that it is the activity of the network of living beings weaved together that makes the world habitable for all forms of life, including humans. We are not the architects of Earth’s habitability; we are its beneficiaries. This is the key originality of the habitability concept presented here, in contrast with traditional ideas focused on monospecific habitability by or for humans alone ²⁶ . And this habitability is not limited to the conditions necessary for organic survival but also includes the conditions for thriving and flourishing.

Understanding apparent habitability to identify true habitability. Over the past few centuries, humanity has taken a path of development that has increased its extractive capacities at the expense of the web of life. When pushed to extremes, this approach, based on the illusion that human action can make the world habitable by systematically taking control of the living world, becomes self-destructive. Apparent habitability has masked the fact that it is the actions of living beings that make habitability possible, for life and therefore for humans. Recognizing the agency of living beings allows us to break free from the mistaken modern narrative, which portrays “nature” as passive, static, and inhospitable—where humans impose their technical mastery onto matter in a project of improvement, seen as the only way to make the world liveable—for humans alone. Yet, what our best sciences show beyond doubt is something else: it is the agency and interdependent activity of diverse life forms that makes Earth habitable for each of these forms, including humans, from the beginning—and still today, at every moment ²⁷ . The 20th century confused true habitability with apparent habitability, where the illusion that only humans should be accommodated turned into a proven uninhabitability for all life—and thus for humans as well. The desire to live in isolation ultimately leads to inability to survive at all. In the 21st century, we must recognize true habitability, which alone can ensure the prosperity and future of life. This philosophical perspective emphasizes that undermining true habitability is undermining life’s very capacity to sustain its own existence. It is a crime against the fundamental logic of life.

Defining habitability. Habitability, in its most general sense, can be defined as the quality of any environment at any spatial or temporal scale where the conditions for the health and prosperity of each form of life are created through the interconnected activities of the diversity of life. This definition has four key implications: it acknowledges a creative dynamic (habitability arises from the ongoing activity of living beings); a virtuous cycle (life generates the conditions necessary for its own continuation); scalar universality (the concept applies from local ecosystems to the entire biosphere); and essential interdependence (each type of life contributes to the conditions of habitability for many others, forming loops of recursive dependence). Habitability, therefore, refers to this: the home of each form of life is built by the interconnected activity of life diversity. When applied to humanity, habitability relates to the interdependence between the safety and prosperity of human societies and the health of the living world.

Habitability is a factual property of life on Earth; the habitability principle is its translation into a norm, which any agent capable of normativity can discover. It recognizes that any attack on the ability of living beings to carry out their spontaneous vital activities on an environmental scale is an attack on habitability for life, and therefore for us humans, since we are a manifestation of life. We will henceforth refer to this axiom as “the habitability principle.” It refers to the value according to which respect for what creates the conditions for habitability for life on Earth is of paramount importance. As a norm, does this principle deserve to become a protected value at the core of our civilizational legal architecture?

Habitability is the product of life on Earth. Even if we focus only on protecting conditions suitable for humans, it is essential to preserve the entire living world and the health of ecosystems because their actions create and sustain habitability for us humans. There can be no climate regulation occurs without healthy ocean ecosystems, no agriculture is possible without resilient ecosystems capable of withstanding climate change, and no land water exists without the water cycles driven by plants. Habitability never involves a single species in isolation: since life is interconnected, we cannot safeguard human habitability at the expense of other life forms. Protecting habitability always means safeguarding both human life and the biosphere, as the biosphere contributes to habitability for humans and itself.

The legitimacy of habitability as a protected value: the relationship between habitability and human dignity. The scientific and philosophical shift of the 21st century involves recognizing that the definition of humanity includes its essential interdependencies with the rest of the living world. As a result, humanity itself, through its ecological, material, and social dimensions, is woven into the fabric of life on Earth. Humanity is not an island; it is an archipelago of relationships. Therefore, interdependencies must be protected when we envision a right that genuinely safeguards humans. Protecting humans without safeguarding what sustains them is like protecting a ghost. Here, humanism and ecology converge beyond legal systems and traditions to form a humanism of interdependencies— a “relational humanism” ²⁸ where “for the good of humans, we must first think of ourselves as living beings”—creating a shared foundation to anchor the habitability principle. After traditional humanism, which is expressed through the principle of dignity, relational humanism is expressed through the habitability principle.

The habitability principle is based on a theoretical framework that values both the relationships between terms and the terms themselves—such as humans, species, and environments. What matters is not only the beings but also the connections that sustain their existence. This shift in perspective allows it to escape the conflict between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism because it emphasizes interdependencies. It is neither purely anthropocentric nor ecocentric: it is relational. In this view, it becomes clear that protecting life is essential to maintaining habitability for humans, since our relationships with all life on Earth are defined by two fundamental conditions: a shared destiny and mutual vulnerability.

Does better protecting nature undermine human dignity? In a relational understanding of humanism, protecting life and protecting humans can no longer be seen as opposing concepts. Opposing the protection of humans to the protection of living beings is like opposing a river to its source. International law recognizes this: “environmental damage has negative implications, both direct and indirect, for the effective enjoyment of all human rights” ²⁹ . Judges understand: to those who oppose  an improved legal framework for the protection of nature by invoking the risk that dignity will be sidelined, they respond, on the contrary, that when humanity protects the interdependencies between humans and all living things, dignity is not sidelined: it is amplified ³⁰ . From these elements, it is possible to identify a common basis in the form of a deduction: if habitability conditions the exercise of human rights, and if human rights are based on a protected core value, then habitability is in turn a protected core value.

In other words, in an uninhabitable environment, no dignified human life is possible. That is why habitability is a prerequisite for the expression of human dignity. In environments rendered uninhabitable by human actions that reduce the capacity for life to sustain itself, the possibility of dignity is no longer protected. Since human dignity is a core legal value, habitability, which is its prerequisite, must also be a core legal value because it is foundational to dignity. We have collectively failed to recognize that dignity depends on another value that has not been protected. Dignity rests on habitability, the way a cathedral rests on its foundations. Dignity can only be exercised if this fundamental value is truly recognized and established at the highest normative level: this is the habitability principle.

In the 21st century: habitability as the foundation of environmental law. In the 20th century, faced with human atrocities, society established dignity as a non-negotiable and imprescriptible foundation capable of supporting the edifice of human rights, enabling it to withstand the onslaught of inhumanity. In the 21st century, faced with the existential threats caused by the ecological and climate crisis, and the inability of environmental law—due to its history and infrastructural weaknesses—to protect humanity, society needs to unite behind a foundation similar to the principle of dignity, which, through its common recognition and higher value in the hierarchy of norms, will ensure its sustainability. This is what the “habitability principle” proposes. Just as dignity is a property of humans, habitability is a property of life on Earth. “Every man carries the entire form of human condition,” says dignity. “Every man carries the entire form of living condition,” says habitability. In the 20th century, dignity helped humanize society; in the 21st century, habitability must help sustain the interdependencies that make up humanity.

B – A new foundation for environmental law

The process of rebuilding environmental law. From ethics to law, the habitability principle as a core value emphasizes respecting the relationship between humans and all life on Earth. This principle supports the health, prosperity, and future of both humanity and the biosphere, driving a reconstruction of environmental law. Confronted with the vulnerability of a weakened legal framework lacking a protected founding value, the habitability principle opens the way for a stronger environmental law capable of meeting the challenges of life on Earth.

Science is betting on the law to protect the interdependencies between humanity and the biosphere. The 2024 IPBES Report “Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health: The Nexus Assessment” ³¹ states that one of the major levers for protecting the sustainability of biodiversity and humanity is to strengthen environmental laws and policies and their implementation, as well as the rule of law in general. The reference to “the rule of law in general” reveals that the protection of interdependencies, and therefore habitability, goes beyond environmental law alone and falls within the most fundamental level of law.

The law, meanwhile, unknowingly, as in The Purloined Letter, already implicitly points to habitability as a protected core value. It is there, in the centre of the room, waiting to be named and given a unified framework to elevate environmental law to the level of higher rights, serving as guardian of this century’s existential challenge. To find it, we need to examine the current contradictions that limit environmental law and, at the same time, provide the tools for its reform. Confronted with the reality of interconnectedness, an emerging movement is forming to strengthen environmental law from its current weakened state.

Habitability as a fundamental legal principle and its application across different branches of law. The origin of this idea is essential: it comes from a higher level. While we identified the remedy of habitability based on the diagnosis of the limitations of environmental law, this principle extends beyond it and is among the most fundamental principles of law. In other words, the habitability principle is not limited to environmental law; it belongs to fundamental law, allowing it to influence various legal fields. In the name of dignity, legislators and judges can prohibit or impose behaviours in different areas—such as bioethics law, medical law, administrative law, contract law, detainee rights law, and others—when necessary. Likewise, only as a fundamental principle can habitability remove obstacles across different legal areas—such as administrative law, criminal law, contract law, and economic law ³² —whenever living conditions are at risk.

To achieve this, it must pursue several higher legal pathways involving species, space, time, and values.

An “interspecific” law. Faced with a dualistic, limited environmental law that separates the interests of humanity from those of the biosphere, even though their destinies are deeply linked, interspecific environmental law—now expanded and increasingly regarded as the law designed to protect the conditions for life on Earth—is gaining legitimacy and intensity. It thus becomes a higher form of law, serving as a safeguard of the habitability of life, no longer merely regulatory, and no longer confined to administrative policing alone.

In international law, the recognition of the interdependence between humans and all living things dates back to the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, where states proclaimed that “the Earth, home of humankind, forms an interdependent whole.” More recently, this was reiterated in the United Nations General Assembly Resolution of July 28, 2022, on the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, which states that “environmental damage has negative effects on the exercise of all human rights.” The historic opinion of the International Court of Justice of July 23, 2025, delivered unanimously by the judges, affirms that “the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is essential for the enjoyment of other human rights” ³³ .

In French law, the Environmental Charter, which is part of the constitutional framework, states that “natural resources and balances have shaped the emergence of humanity” and that “the future and very existence of humanity are inseparable from its natural environment.” For the French Constitutional Council, “the preservation of the environment must be pursued in the same way as the other fundamental interests of the Nation” ³⁴ , Law on emergency measures for the protection of purchasing power. and must therefore be elevated to the highest level in the hierarchy of values protected by law: constitutional value. The dual movement of internationalization and constitutionalisation of environmental protection has created a common foundation for maximum protection, through higher law, of the relationship between humanity and all life on Earth.

An “international” law. If we hope to preserve the prosperity and long-term survival of both humanity and the biosphere, we must address the contradiction between true solidarity in facing global environmental threats and the current nationalist withdrawal on environmental issues. On a warming planet, “the fate of humanity depends in part on the convergence of legal systems around common values” ³⁵ .

A sign of the increasing importance of international law supporting environmental protection, this area of law, which has long been programmatic, is becoming more legally binding, despite ongoing challenges. In its advisory opinion of July 2025, the International Court of Justice stated that environmental treaties, and beyond that, customary international law and international human rights law, impose an obligation on all states, regardless of whether they have ratified specific treaties, to prevent significant damage to the climate system and the environment ³⁶ .

International criminal law also addresses this issue. Within international law, its role is to ensure—through widespread condemnation—the protection of values that the global community deems worthy of the highest protection ³⁷ . It is no coincidence that the prohibition against harming elements essential to human life is becoming more significant. The European directive on the protection of the environment through criminal law promotes harsher punishments for environmental crimes, especially in cases of intentional offenses causing catastrophic environmental damage ³⁸ . There is an increasing movement that calls for the most serious environmental crimes to be addressed as crimes against humanity. The Draft Policy on Environmental Crimes issued by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court aims to advance “accountability for environmental crimes under the Rome Statute” ³⁹ , thus helping to expand the concept of crimes against humanity to include crimes against habitability. Just as universal condemnation of crimes against humanity has highlighted dignity as a core human rights value, universal condemnation of widespread or systematic attacks on life on Earth is revealing habitability as a fundamental, structural value of law.

All these advances in international law, which certainly need to be refined, remind us that a liveable Earth is not just another commodity but a core value of human societies that demands a unified response globally.

An “intergenerational” law. The effects of human actions on the environment extend over time. The global community is built on the memory of a shared past where development that benefited a few came at the expense of the environment for everyone, and on the vision of a shared future in which “choices made to meet the needs of the present do not compromise the ability of future generations and other peoples to meet their own needs” ⁴⁰ .

There is a contradiction between the long timeframes involved in risks to habitability and the short timeframes involved in environmental policies, reflecting a dual deficit of memory and foresight. The time has now come to acknowledge responsibility for the past and to project that responsibility into the future.

A responsibility for the past. Addressing global environmental damage that endangers the Earth’s habitability, especially affecting vulnerable populations the most, is an increasing issue of intergenerational justice. The principle of compensating for transboundary environmental harm was affirmed as international law by the International Court of Justice in its February 2, 2018, ruling in Costa Rica v. Nicaragua. Recently, in its advisory opinion of July 23, 2025, on “Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change,” the Hague Court stated that violations of climate obligations are considered “internationally wrongful acts of States, which are to be ascertained on the basis of the primary rules and the customary rules on State responsibility” and may lead to a right to reparation under certain conditions.

A responsibility for the future. The preamble to the Declaration on Future Generations adopted by the United Nations in September 2024 states that “we must learn from our past achievements and failures, and their consequences, in order to ensure a more sustainable, just and equitable world for present and future generations, and understanding the interconnectedness of past, present and future.” Gradually, responsibility toward future generations is becoming a binding legal principle: in international law, where it appears in several texts—the United Nations Charter, the Rome Statute, the Paris Agreement, in particular—in regional law, in the Treaty on European Union, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the appointment of a European Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness—in national law, where the concept is present in more than half of the constitutions of the world’s states. A jurisprudential movement favouring constitutional courts considering future generations “has gained momentum and is accelerating” ⁴¹ . This trend has led to several major decisions ⁴² .

As human societies recognize their shared memory and common future—beyond cultural differences—a collective responsibility for maintaining the habitability of the planet for both present and future generations is emerging. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights recently formalized this principle in its advisory opinion on the climate emergency and human rights, published on July 3, 2025, in which it describes “the obligation not to cause irreversible damage to the climate and the environment” ⁴³ as a rule of jus cogens, that is, a mandatory norm “accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole” ⁴⁴ from which there can be no derogation.

An “inclusive” law. While we all rely on interdependencies with all life on Earth, debates continue about the intrinsic or instrumental value of the environment, which would be exclusive of any other. Beyond their apparent opposition, these ethical debates, reflected in the legal sphere, converge on two points: the importance of protecting the relationships between humanity and all life on Earth; and the confidence, to achieve this, in resorting to higher legal instruments.

Two movements particularly illustrate this pursuit of maximum protection grounded in fundamental legal principles.

The extension of personality. The movement for the rights of nature has gained momentum over the past fifteen years, aiming to go beyond the limitations of environmental law by extending personality rights. Aside from the debates it sparks, this movement offers several important lessons, as shown by the Spanish Constitutional Court in its November 20, 2024, decision on the Mar Menor lagoon: 1. The “current legal protection system is insufficient, despite significant regulatory instruments” to safeguard it. 2. “the well-being of people depends on the well-being of ecosystems”; 3. the law provides a “sufficiently open framework” that allows legislators to develop environmental protection rules “from a wide variety of perspectives and approaches”; 4. granting legal personality to the Mar Menor is a technical regulatory tool that enables economic, social, and environmental aspects to coexist, complementing other legal tools aimed at preserving human health and safety through the protection of living organisms’ health. Clearly, regardless of the symbolic importance sought, the use of law here aims to “emphasize[] its structural role in the vital balance of the conditions that make this planet inhabitable. This approach reinforces a paradigm focused on the protection of the ecological conditions that are essential for life” ⁴⁵ .

The renewal of property. By reinterpreting the concept of “common goods,” economists, followed by lawyers, are calling for us to move beyond “destructive property rights” or the “Tragedy of the Commons” ⁴⁶ , where environmental goods belong to no one and are overexploited by everyone—toward a “protective property right” or ”prophylaxis of the commons”—where environmental resources are shared, managed, and preserved by the community to ensure their sustainability ⁴⁷ . The concept of environmental commons is recognized in international law, encompassing the seabed, outer space, the Moon, and celestial bodies, as well as certain animal species, natural parks, and cultural and artistic heritage related to the environment. Furthermore, the “increased” ⁴⁸ use of the common good and related concepts—in both discourse and practice—aims to strengthen the protection of the relationship between humanity and all living environments by elevating it to a high level of law.

Conclusion

Moving toward a sustainable way of living on Earth. If, in the 21st century, society agrees that habitability should become, for ecological issues, what dignity was in the 20th century for human issues; and if, in the 21st century, humanity, aware of its fragility, strives to revive, in light of the habitability principle, the legitimacy and effectiveness of the law in the service of living conditions; then society will be able to move more confidently toward a sustainable way of inhabiting the Earth, respecting this world of interdependencies where the security of humanity and the health of life share a common destiny.

Several legal avenues can be pursued at higher levels of law—national and supranational—to reinforce the habitability principle. Here are a few examples among many others.

Constitutional protection of habitability. At the State  level, constitutional protection is a crucial means of ensuring the safeguarding of living conditions on Earth, as the Constitution is the highest law of a nation—a contract made by the constituent people that goes beyond political circumstances, rooted in history, and oriented toward the future. Some constitutions include an “eternity clause” that guarantees fundamental rights in broad terms for both the present and the future, as seen in Germany and Japan. Because respecting the interdependence between humanity and all life is essential for the prosperity and the posterity of mankind, it must be protected permanently at the highest norm level: the constitutional level. Article 21 of the Dutch Constitution states that “the government shall be concerned with the habitability of the territory and the protection and improvement of the environment.” The constitutional judge, who preserves the Constitution’s vitality through flexible interpretation, plays a vital role in implementing the habitability principle. Active constitutional jurisprudence already works to elevate environmental protection to the level of fundamental freedoms and to influence law constitutionality accordingly. In 2021, Germany’s Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe invalidated the climate law, stating that “the Basic Law requires that the natural foundations of life be cared for in such a way that they can be passed on to future generations” ⁵⁰ . In France, after recognizing in 2022 that “the preservation of the environment must be pursued on an equal footing with the other fundamental interests of the Nation” ⁵¹ , on August 8, 2025, for the first time, it issued a censorship decision based on the autonomous right of everyone to live in a balanced and healthy environment (Art. 1, Environmental Charter), considering that laws permitting exemptions from the ban on using certain treatment products in agriculture—which have “an impact on biodiversity (…), water and soil quality” and pose “risks to human health”—deprived the constitutional right to the environment of “legal guarantees.”

[/note]. In France, after recognizing in 2022 that “the preservation of the environment must be pursued on an equal footing with the other fundamental interests of the Nation” ⁵² , on August 8, 2025, for the first time, it issued a censorship decision based on the autonomous right of everyone to live in a balanced and healthy environment (Art. 1, Environmental Charter), considering that laws permitting exemptions from the ban on using certain treatment products in agriculture—which have “an impact on biodiversity (…), water and soil quality” and pose “risks to human health”—deprived the constitutional right to the environment of “legal guarantees.”

In the future, the constitutional judge could go further and enshrine the constitutional value of habitability. In France, as in the past, in the 1994 “bioethics” decision, the Constitutional Council derived the principle of safeguarding dignity from the first sentence of the Preamble to the 1946 Constitution, which states that every human being has inalienable and sacred rights, it could, tomorrow, derive the principle of safeguarding habitability from the Environmental Charter, interpreted in light of the 1946 Preamble.

Criminal protection of habitability. Criminal law, described by Emile Durkheim as the “common conscience” of a society in which interdependence has created organic solidarity ⁵³ , reveals the most essential values of a society. The ongoing movement to criminalize the most serious environmentally damaging behaviours at the national, regional, and international levels illustrates the cardinal importance of protecting the relationship between humanity and all life on earth.

In international criminal law, in particular, while in the 20th century the international community focused on the concept of crimes against humanity to protect dignity, in the 21st century it might focus on the concept of crimes against habitability to defend itself from serious and systematic attacks that threaten its health, security, and interdependence with the biosphere.As we finish writing these lines, a major step forward has been taken by the international justice system, which acknowledges that climate and environmental issues are an “existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet” ⁵⁴ . As such, say the judges, a sustainable solution must be found that “requires human will and wisdom — at the individual, social and political levels — to change our habits, comforts and current way of life in order to secure a future for ourselves and those who are yet to come” ⁵⁵ . Confronted with unprecedented climate and environmental challenges, the law cannot do everything, but it can do quite a lot by establishing prohibitions and protected values that will help society move forward: “From an eminently juridical perspective, the prohibition of conducts that irreversibly harm the vital equilibrium of the interdependent ecosystems that make the survival of present and future generations on a habitable planet viable, and their normative hierarchy, can be deduced from general principles of law” ⁵⁶ . Yesterday, the Nuremberg Tribunal gave its voice to dignity; today, international justice gives its voice to habitability. Let us hear.

1. Statement by Lee Zeldin, new administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency appointed by President Trump, March 12, 2025.
2. Agathe Van Lang, Droit de l’environnement (5th ed. PUF 2021) para 11 (free translation from French original).
3. Laurent Neyret, ‘La sanction en droit de l’environnement – Pour une théorie générale’ in C Chainais and D Fenouillet (eds), Les sanctions en droit contemporain, vol 1 (Dalloz 2012) 533.
4. François Molins (ed), Le traitement pénal du contentieux de l’environnement (Presses Universitaires d’Aix-Marseille 2023) 10.
5. Pierre Lunel and others, ‘Pour une histoire du droit de l’environnement’ (1986) 1 Revue juridique de l’environnement 43.
6. Pierre Lascoumes and Gilles J Martin, ‘Des droits épars au Code de l’environnement’ (1995) 30/31 Droit et Société 323.
7. Michel Prieur and others, Droit de l’environnement (Dalloz 2023) para 13.
8. Laurent Fonbaustier, ‘Les nouveaux objets en matière environnementale’ (Nov 2024) 13 Titre VII, L’environnement 59
9. Gilles J Martin, ‘Les angles morts de la doctrine juridique environnementaliste’ (2020) 1 Revue juridique de l’environnement 67.
10. Ibid.
11. Emmanuel Dockès, Valeurs de la démocratie (Dalloz, Méthodes du droit 2004) 123.
12. Serge Gutwirth, ‘Trente ans de théorie du droit de l’environnement : concepts et opinions’ (2001) 26 Environnement et Société 5.
13. Patrick Baard, ‘Rights of Nature Through a Legal Expressivist Lens: Legal Recognition of Non-anthropocentric Values’ (2024) Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (citing Jedediah Purdy, ‘Our Place in the World: A New Relationship of Environmental Ethics and Law’ (2013) 62 Duke Law Journal 857).
14. Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1580, M Rat ed, 1958) Book 3, Chapter 2.
15. Mireille Delmas-Marty, Résister, responsabiliser, anticiper (Seuil 2013) 126.
16. Ibid.
17. Mireille Delmas-Marty, Aux quatre vents du monde (Seuil 2016) 85.
18. Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of December 10, 1948.
19. Art. 1, Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union of December 7, 2000.
20. Preamble to the French Constitution of 1946.
21. Conseil constitutionnel Decision no 94-343/344 DC (27 July 1994).
22. We draw inspiration here from Hans Jonas’s “principle of responsibility” and Marc Bloch’s “principle of hope” to identify something different from an epistemological and normative perspective: the discovery of a value protected by law, similar to how dignity was revealed to provide human rights with a new foundation.
23. IPBES, Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health: The Nexus Assessment (17 December 2024).
24. Mireille Delmas-Marty, Sortir du pot au noir (Buchet Chastel 2019) 83.
25. Richard Powers, The Overstory (WW Norton & Co 2018) 143.
26. See on this point, Baptiste Morizot and Suzanne Husky, Rendre l’eau à la terre (Actes Sud 2025) ch 13, ‘La vie aménage le monde pour la vie’ (formulating the concept of habitability for life).
27. A more detailed version of this thesis, based on natural and social sciences, can be found in the second part of Baptiste Morizot, Raviver les braises du vivant. Un front commun (Actes Sud/Wildproject 2020).
28. See Baptiste Morizot, ‘L’écologie contre l’humanisme, Sur l’insistance d’un faux problème’ (2018) 10 Essais, revue interdisciplinaire d’humanités 105; Baptiste Morizot, Les Diplomates (Wildproject 2016) pt 3.
29. UNGA, Res. 76/300, on the Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment, July 8, 2022.
30. Spanish Constitutional Court, Decision Mar Menor (20 November 2024).
31. IPBES, Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health: The Nexus Assessment (17 December 2024).
32. Aude-Solveig Epstein, La transformation écologique du droit économique (IERDJ 2025).
33. International Court of Justice, Advisory Opinion of 23 July 2025, Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, General List No. 187.
34. Conseil constitutionnel Decision no 2022-843 DC (12 August 2022)
35. Mireille Delmas-Marty, Sortir du pot au noir (Buchet Chastel 2019) 10.
36. International Court of Justice, Advisory Opinion of 23 July 2025, Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, General List No. 187.
37. By extension of the function of criminal law in national law. See André Vitu, Traité de droit criminel: Droit pénal spécial, vol I, 7th edn (Cujas 1982) para 22.
38. Directive (EU) 2024/1203 of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 11, 2024 on the protection of the environment through criminal law, recital 21.
39. Statement by the ICC Prosecutor, February 16, 2024.
40. Preamble to the Environmental Charter appended to the French Constitution by Constitutional Law No. 2005-205 of March 1, 2005.
41. L Fabius, ‘The constitutional judge and future generations’ (Symposium, Dans l’espace de justice, les pratiques juridictionnelles au service du futur, Cour de cassation, Paris, 21 November 2024) ; and previously : International event Justice, Future Generations, and the Environment, Conseil constitutionnel, 7 February 2024.
42. See S Djemni-Wagner (ed), Droit(s) des générations futures (Institut des études et de la recherche sur le droit et la justice (IERDJ) 2023).
43. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Advisory Opinion on Climate Emergency and Human Rights (29 May 2025, published 3 July 2025) para 287.
44. Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (23 May 1969) 1155 UNTS 331, art 53.
45. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Advisory Opinion on Climate Emergency and Human Rights (29 May 2025, published 3 July 2025) para 280.
46. Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ (1968) 162(3859) Science 1243.
47. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (Cambridge University Press 1990).
48. J Rochfeld, ‘Préface’ in Les communs en droit de l’environnement (Special issue, 2022) Revue juridique de l’environnement 7, 11.

50. Constitutional protection of habitability. At the State  level, constitutional protection is a crucial means of ensuring the safeguarding of living conditions on Earth, as the Constitution is the highest law of a nation—a contract made by the constituent people that goes beyond political circumstances, rooted in history, and oriented toward the future. Some constitutions include an “eternity clause” that guarantees fundamental rights in broad terms for both the present and the future, as seen in Germany and Japan. Because respecting the interdependence between humanity and all life is essential for the prosperity and the posterity of mankind, it must be protected permanently at the highest norm level: the constitutional level. Article 21 of the Dutch Constitution states that “the government shall be concerned with the habitability of the territory and the protection and improvement of the environment.” The constitutional judge, who preserves the Constitution’s vitality through flexible interpretation, plays a vital role in implementing the habitability principle. Active constitutional jurisprudence already works to elevate environmental protection to the level of fundamental freedoms and to influence law constitutionality accordingly. In 2021, Germany’s Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe invalidated the climate law, stating that “the Basic Law requires that the natural foundations of life be cared for in such a way that they can be passed on to future generations” ⁴⁹ German Federal Constitutional Court, Order of 24 March 2021, 1 BvR 2656/18, 1 BvR 78/20, 1 BvR 96/20, 1 BvR 288/20.

51. Conseil constitutionnel Decision no 2022-843 DC (12 August 2022), Law on emergency measures for the protection of purchasing power.
52. Émile Durkheim, De la division du travail social (Quadrige, PUF 2013) 79 and following.
54. International Court of Justice, Advisory Opinion of 23 July 2025, Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, General List No. 187, para 456.
55. Ibid.
56. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Advisory Opinion on Climate Emergency and Human Rights (29 May 2025, published 3 July 2025) para 292.