Coordinate temporali dell’Antropocene: un diverso orizzonte giuridico

Temporal Coordinates of the Anthropocene. From the Tragedy of the Commons to the Tragedy of the (Time) Horizon

Abstract

The Anthropocene can be viewed as either an event or an epoch, requiring our understanding of time to extend to deep time scales. What does the Anthropocene mean for legal sciences? When used as a theoretical framework, it challenges traditional legal concepts such as sovereignty, jurisdiction, competence, territorial space, and linear time. What challenges do law and constitutionalism face with the consequences of climate change? How does the “paradoxical temporality” of the Anthropocene affect the “time of law”?
This paper seeks to provide initial answers to these questions, while examining different temporal levels of the Anthropocene: the geological scale of deep time (§1); the biological dimension of human temporality, with a focus on intergenerational rights in case law (§2); the cultural significance of alternative time concepts from the legal traditions of the Global South (§3), and the “chronopolitical” structure of democratic institutions dealing with the tragedy of the temporal horizon (§4).

Keywords: Anthropocene law; Law and time; Climate law; Tragedy of the temporal horizon