TY - CHAP
T1 - Disasters and Responsibility
T2 - Normative Issues for Law Following Disasters
AU - Lauta, Kristian Cedervall
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Major disasters are windows to societies’ deepest, darkest secrets. Moments, which allow us to sneak a peek at the categories according to which, we distribute wealth or justice and organize society as such. Law has come to play a vital role in this regard. In this chapter, I argue that (legal) conflicts after disaster are inevitable, as we have collectively changed our perception of what a disaster is. The modern disaster is anything but natural in its constitution; it is a deeply political, moral and cultural phenomenon. Accordingly, it is also legal. Furthermore, three overall features characterize the legal cases that arise out of disasters. They all deal with serious losses, complex causalities and tricky normative distinctions. While the first two play to the strengths of the legal order, the third is what make these cases controversial. Thus, in the process of solving the legal facts presented, courts face a number of questions of a non-legal nature. In order to perform its main function (to solve the conflict at hand) law is forced to engage with the most central questions we are confronted with in an Anthropocene world: which processes are driven by natural forces and which by culture, who is a citizen, and what belongs to sphere of scientific uncertainty or misconduct?.
AB - Major disasters are windows to societies’ deepest, darkest secrets. Moments, which allow us to sneak a peek at the categories according to which, we distribute wealth or justice and organize society as such. Law has come to play a vital role in this regard. In this chapter, I argue that (legal) conflicts after disaster are inevitable, as we have collectively changed our perception of what a disaster is. The modern disaster is anything but natural in its constitution; it is a deeply political, moral and cultural phenomenon. Accordingly, it is also legal. Furthermore, three overall features characterize the legal cases that arise out of disasters. They all deal with serious losses, complex causalities and tricky normative distinctions. While the first two play to the strengths of the legal order, the third is what make these cases controversial. Thus, in the process of solving the legal facts presented, courts face a number of questions of a non-legal nature. In order to perform its main function (to solve the conflict at hand) law is forced to engage with the most central questions we are confronted with in an Anthropocene world: which processes are driven by natural forces and which by culture, who is a citizen, and what belongs to sphere of scientific uncertainty or misconduct?.
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-92722-0_4
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-92722-0_4
M3 - Book chapter
SN - 978-3-319-92721-3
T3 - Advancing Global Bioethics
SP - 43
EP - 53
BT - Disasters
A2 - O’Mathúna, Dónal P.
A2 - Dranseika, Vilius
A2 - Gordijn, Bert
PB - Springer
ER -