It’s all about the numbers. The climate movement has lately been on the defensive, to put it mildly. Among the many disheartening consequences of the 2016 election has been the need to defend hard-won environmental and climate protections from rollback by the most corporate-friendly Washington political leadership in decades. The Trump administration plans to withdraw...
On March 4, as part of a panel discussion at the University of Oregon School of Law’s annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, CDP Co-Founder and Executive Director Kelsey Skaggs spoke about the necessity defense and its applicability to climate activism. The discussion — which also featured law professors Tom Lininger and Lance Long, activist...
CDP has just published the Political Necessity Defense Jurisdiction Guide, a comprehensive resource on the necessity defense and its application to political protest. The necessity defense is an age-old legal doctrine that lets individuals off the hook for breaking the law in the public interest. In recent decades, necessity defenses have been successfully used by...
