Standing Up for Trees: Rethinking Representation in a Multispecies Context

For decades expectation of legal rights for nonhuman nature has been central to discussions of climate loss and change. Conceptual debates over whether trees and other nature have standing have been useful for conservationists and reformists hoping to use law to end the destruction of nonhuman nature. Yet assigning rights to nature requires us to grapple with new relational and legal frameworks; to rework the ways in which nature is represented as the subject of legal disputes and as a legal subject. This article explores what it means to stand up for nonhuman nature - specifically, trees - in law. That inquiry moves beyond the decades-old question of whether trees and other nature should have legal rights. Instead, I ask how trees can claim and express those rights in what remains the anthropocentric space of law. I suggest that literature offers a way out of this conundrum, helping us to rethink representation by formulating a "good story" that moves beyond self and species to inspire acceptance of a broader - albeit sometimes unrecognizable - community.