Kegan Pepper-Smith: 'Climate necessity' new defence in civil disobedience cases

Not responsible by reason of necessity. 
These were the words an American judge recently used when she refused to convict more than a dozen people charged with acts of civil disobedience against a gas pipeline project in the Boston suburb of West Roxbury.
This decision represents the latest development in a shifting judicial consciousness and legal landscape, one where we might end up seeing American climate activists acquitted of criminal charges in the name of the “climate necessity