POST-FUKUSHIMA JAPAN AND THE ENGAGEMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW EDUCATION BEYOND ITS HOME DISCIPLINE

Abstract

The present article is an exploratory attempt to answer the following question : how can environmental legal education engage with the Anthropocene? Focusing on the Japanese context, it interweaves the author's own biographical experience (i.e. a recent professional move from the Graduate School of Law to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences) with analysis of how international non-monodisciplinary teaching frameworks may provide a vantage point for progressively reshaping the edges of environmental law education in the proposed 'Age of Humankind'. It discusses more particularly the practical and theoretical conditions under which integrated syllabi and innovative case-based pedagogies may contribute to the development of environmental legal studies in post-Fukushima Japan. In this regard, what is considered is the extent to which a set of cross-listed courses recently established for a mixed body of under-and postgraduate students enrolled in different tracks (Environmental Sciences and Humanities & Social Sciences) help both to breakdown familiar legal approaches to environmental problems and turn the classroom into a new 'community of inquiry'