The Interconnected Law project is currently just one person, though my hope is that in the future it is more than just me!
Hi! My name is Alex May. I’m British and currently a PhD student at Birkbeck University, London, UK, which I started in October 2022.
I studied my undergraduate law degree at Oxford University (2011-2015), which included a year’s study abroad in Bonn, Germany. During the degree I studied environmental law, human rights law and jurisprudence. A year later, I completed an LLM at the London School of Economics (2016-17), in which I studied modules on legal theory, human rights theory, policing law, cyberlaw and environmental law. I wrote my dissertation about Earth Jurisprudence and human rights law, which planted the seeds that became the idea for interconnected law about a year later.
There was a distinct moment when I was started to plan out ideas for my dissertation, I was in the library and made a mind map of my ideas. An hour later, I realised what I had drawn was a PhD scale project (if not more!), not just a dissertation project. That was also when I realised that what I wanted to work on was ideas about law and getting these into the world, so as to change our legal system and our world. I subsequently figured out a small part of this which would work as a dissertation topic.
I also realised both that this is something I am good at and that there aren’t many other people thinking about law in this way. Therefore, this was the thing that I should do. In some ways, I am slightly reluctant about this. Being more honest, I don’t really want the task of being at the forefront of trying to make Big Changes to our ideas about law and our legal systems. I would much prefer it if this was already happening (or, you know, wasn’t already needed because we lived in a just and harmonious society!) and I could play a supporting role. But, well, someone has to do it…
In the five years since then, Interconnected Law was a side project. I was slowly developing my ideas around law, reading, and writing articles and blog posts for online news outlets. Now, it is my focus!
Prior to the PhD, I:
- Worked as a legal research assistant on projects around air quality law, corporate sustainability, business and human rights and equality law
- Worked for a Member of Parliament as a Parliamentary Assistant, which included research and briefings on a range of political issues, media, video editing and supporting them with correspondence with constituents
- Wrote a handful of articles on political issues (listed here
- Coached parkour (more here!)
- Worked part-time as an operations manager for a small tech team which runs digital campaigns for NGO
- Worked in a cafe
The Development of Interconnected Law
The idea of ‘Interconnected Law’ started in about 2017, growing out of my master’s dissertation, though my path started a few years before that, towards the end of my undergraduate law degree. I had become quite interested in the role of law in society, and its political role. This included studying human rights, environmental law and legal and political theory, but theoretically it includes many standard areas of law as well. Studying environmental law, I was aware that our legal system was clearly failing to secure positive ecological outcomes, and quite cynical about the topic.
The story of what is now Interconnected Law begins in a book which I read after graduating, Cormac Cullinan’s Wild Law. This was my first encounter with Earth Jurisprudence, which had a radically different way of seeing law and looked at the relationship between humans and the rest of Nature (more about that here), and it has been a lasting inspiration.
I then began to wonder what it would mean to apply these ideas beyond the human-rest of Nature relationships, and realised that Earth Jurisprudence needed expanding, being only half of the picture. I came across the relational approach to law (more on that here), and shortly afterwards a friend pointed me to a book about a Systems View, naming a broader paradigm covering many disciplines of ‘holistic’ or ‘systemic’ thinking, which the relational approach and Earth Jurisprudence are both within.
My conclusion was that all of these ideas needed to be drawn together into one approach to law, and ‘Interconnection’ is the commonality. This name captures the critique — that individualistic separation and ideas based on it is flawed — as well as the positive vision.
Of course, ‘academic’ and political ideas do not exist in a vacuum, and I have also been influenced by many other experiences and ideas. These included activist organising, often done with non-hierarchical principles; working with young people; and working for an MP. The aim is not to write about ideas abstractly, but produce something useful for a range of political actors and to change in the world, not just interpret it.