Nils Kohlmeier

Contradiction-Responsive Law: A Search Formula for Just Socio-Ecological (Legal) Transformations

Lithium mining in South America, which is essential for the European Green Deal, leads to socio-ecological crises, which in turn are rooted in contradictions between economic rationalities on the one hand and social and ecological rationalities on the other. My dissertation project is based on the hypothesis that these contradictions have inscribed themselves into the norms of the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) and the Free Trade Agreement between the EU and Chile (FTA EU-Chile).

In order to negotiate these contradictions in the sense of just socio-ecological (legal) transformations, a negotiation standard must be developed in the respective standardizations: On the one hand, the norms of the CRMA and the FTA EU-Chile must comply with the sustainability requirements under EU and International Law. However, because the law has both a transformation-promoting and transformation-inhibiting effect, these sustainability requirements themselves must – on the other hand – also be made accessible to criticism. By way of legal transcendence, these requirements must be questioned in an interdisciplinary manner and the findings from this must in turn be transferred to the law’s own operations.