Month: March 2017

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...