Environmental Groups and Legal Expertise: Shaping the Brexit Process

Environmental Groups and Legal Expertise explores theuseand understanding of law and legal expertise by environmental groups. Ratherthan the usual focus on the court room, it scrutinises environmental NGOadvocacy during the extraordinarily dramatic Brexit process, from thereferendum on leaving the EU in June 2016 to the debate around the newEnvironment Bill in the first half of 2020.

There is generally a weak understanding ofboth the complexity and the potential of legal expertise in the environmentalNGO community. Legal expertise can be more than a tool for campaigners, andmore than litigation: it provides distinctive ways of both seeing the world andchanging the world. The available legal resource in the sector is not just apractical limit on what can be done, but spills into the veryunderstanding of what should be done, and what resource is needed. Mutuallyreinforcing links between capacity, understanding, culture and investmentaffect legal expertise across the board.

There are, however, pockets ofsophisticated legal expertise in the community, and legal expertise was heavilyand often effectively used in the anomalously law-heavy Brexit-environmentdebate. The ability to call on thinly spread legal expertise in a crisis was inpart due to effective NGO collaboration around Brexit-environment.