- Based on the Justinian Code’s protection of res communes, governments have long served as trustees for rights held in common.
- Legal rationales have played a critical role in many nonviolent movements. They strengthen participants by lending a sense of clarity that they are not promoting personal opinions by criminal means but rather performing a public duty. And they strengthen a movement’s appeal to the broader society by presenting action not as wanton lawbreaking but as an effort to rectify governments and institutions that are themselves in violation of the law.
- Future climate protesters can proudly proclaim that they are actually climate protectors, upholding the law, not violating it. Nobody should expect American judges to start acquitting protesters on public trust grounds any time soon. But juries that try climate protesters should keep in mind that they have the right and the responsibility to acquit those they believe have violated no just law.
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