Of density and decline: reflections on environmental law teaching in the UK and on the co-production of environmental law scholarship

Abstract

This chapter was written by the module convenor of a final year undergraduate Environmental Law course in the UK and his students. In it, we ask a series of questions about the teaching of environmental law in the UK. We do this, in part, by drawing on data we collected from the top 100 UK law school websites and survey responses from UK environmental law scholars. We show what we think is a decline in the provision of environmental law teaching in the UK and stasis in student numbers over time. We explore perceptions that environmental law is ‘ soft ’ , asking if this is because environmental law scholars are seen as liberal ‘tree huggers’ and/or because environmental law is thought to be more about values than about law. We also look at employability as a mission of modern u niversities, asking if studying environmental law at university can only ever be a ‘nice to have’ in this context. We ask more questions than we can answer, but hope this piece is the start of an important debate. And we hope it will encourage other environmental law academics to do this sort of action research with their students.