Environmental law-making public opinion in Victorian Britain: The cross-currents of Bentham's and Coleridge's ideas

Pontin, Ben

Abstract

It is increasingly clear that law and its enforcement in Victorian Britain were quite effective in tackling formative industrial problems concerning pollution and broader threats to nature. What is unclear is the political philosophy, if any, underlying this historic achievement. A prevalent view is that early 'environmental' law lacked any philosophical underpinning (being instead a piecemeal reaction to the various problems of industrialization as and when these presented themselves). The article revisits this issue with reference to Dicey's analysis of 19th century 'lawmaking public opinion'. Dicey identified three broad streams of seminal opinion that, he argued, shaped laws as the century unfolded. The early part of the century was dominated by 'Old Toryism', including the romantic conservatism associated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This then gave ground to 'Benthamism' (or 'individualism') which in turn ceded dominance to 'collectivism' (also influenced by Bentham's ideas). Whilst Dicey ignored laws relating to the environment, I argue that this is not because these presented a particular difficulty for his thesis. Indeed, all three seams of 'law-making opinion' converged around the legal protection of nature to offer a rich and diverse philosophical foundation for environmental law.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 6, 2019
• Journal: Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
• Print ISSN: 0143-6503
• Electronic ISSN: 1464-3820
• Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 34
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 759-790
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqu015
• Keywords: environmental law, green industrial revolution, Coleridge, Bentham
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/807300
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqu015
• Related Public URLs: http://ojls.oxfordjournals.org/
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Published online 26 July 2014.