A Brief Analysis Of The Legal Meaning Of Intergenerational Justice

The emergence of the environmental crisis in the last century has forced people to reflect on the traditional patterns of human evolution.It has been found by some that the development of the past is human-centered,strictly speaking of contemporary people,and thus presents a variety of solution,of which the most famous is sustainable development.The proposition of sustainable development has an important influence on many social disciplines,including the law.And one of the basic problems to be solved is intergenerational equity.Intergenerational equity generally refers to the contemporary and future generations in the fair allocation of resources and the modern age,people on environmental protection obligations to future generations.This paper mainly discusses the possibility of introducing intergenerational equity into jurisprudence and related issues.In general,there are three opinions on the basic theory of intergenerational equity.The first is utilitarianism.Which argues that what contemporary people should do and what they can do for the future generations is to minimize their suffering and increase their total happiness.The second is emotionalism,which considers people to be self-interested in rationality,but may be altruistic in emotion.The third is liberalism,which believes that the fairness of contemporary and future generations must be based on the recognition and affirmation of the rights of future generations.Intergenerational equity is derives from ecological problems,and its theory can provide a theoretical foundation of philosophy and ethic for sustainable development.Because of its unique diachronic and unidirectionality,the theory of intergenerational equity not only poses a challenge to the traditional philosophy,ethics and law,but also provides new perspectives,new dimensions and new research methods for philosophy,ethics and law.Given that the traditional jurisprudence doesn’t take into account the time dimension,this paper makes some tentative exploration on the legal value,research paradigm,and legal subjects of traditional jurisprudence from the perspective of intergenerational equity.The extension of intergenerational equity to legal value is that the continuation of the group should be regarded as the basic value of the law.The extension of the intergenerational equity to the right-standard paradigm is that an obligation-standard paradigm should be adopted in the aspect of intergenerational equity.And the intergenerational equity expands the scope of the legal subject and takes the futuregenerations community as a subject of law.This paper is mainly divided into two parts.The first part gives a brief overview of the theory of intergenerational equity,and makes a preliminary argument on the theoretical basis of intergenerational equity in Philosophy.The second part attempts to introduce intergenerational equity theory into jurisprudence.In view of the increasingly prominent ecological problems today,it is necessary to adjust them through the law.However,neither the current legal system nor the construction of legal theory takes into account the time dimension,nor does it include the future generations into the scope of its adjustment.For the sake of research convenience,this paper only makes a preliminary discussion of the legal value,rights-based paradigm,and scope of legal subjects in current mainstream jurisprudence,so as to obtain a better theoretical basis for jurisprudence when faced with new problems and new challenges and to promote the soundness of the legal system and the development of law.