Hans Kelsen formulated law as an autonomous normative system, independent of political, moral, religious, or economic influences. InReine Rechtslehre, law is imagined as a “pure” order, working with its own logic, closed off from considerations outside the norm. Consequently, law is reduced to a formal structure that only assesses validity based on its conformity in the hierarchy of norms, not on the content or values it contains.

However, it is precisely in this claim of purity that problematic assumptions are stored. Kelsen explicitly limits the subject of law only to natural persons and legal persons. This criterion is based on the ability to bear norms, act rationally, and be legally responsible for actions. Thus, only entities with will and rationality are recognized in the legal space.

In this framework, nature is conceptually excluded from the category of legal subjects. It is not considered capable of understanding norms, cannot be held accountable, and is therefore not legally relevant as a rights holder. As a result, nature is reduced to a legal object—merely property, a resource, or an instrument subject to human relations of ownership and control. Its legal status is derivative, depending entirely on the interests of the human subject.

From this it is clear that Kelsen's claimed neutrality of law is not actually value-free, but rather conceals a strong anthropocentric structure. The strict separation between subject (human) and object (nature) is not merely a technical construction, but a reflection of a perspective that places humans as the center of legal legitimacy. Thus, modern law not only regulates the relationship between humans and nature, but also institutionalizes human domination over it.

Implications for Modern Law

The implications for modern law are, of course, very significant. When philosophy and science grant epistemic authority to humans as singular rational subjects, the legal structure adjusts accordingly. The concept of legal subjects and rights emerges within the framework of rational, autonomous, and empowered entities, while nature is positioned as an object that can be owned and regulated.

An important implication for the legal order is the emergence of a conceptual separation that forms the foundation of current law: Legal subject (legal subject): an entity that possesses rational capacity and autonomy, thus having rights and obligations within the legal system. Legal object (legal object): an entity that does not possess rational capacity, thus can be owned, controlled, or regulated, but does not have moral or legal rights.

Nature and all non-human entities fall into the category of legal objects. In the Kantian framework, they do not have rights because they cannot be moral lawmakers or members of the “kingdom of ends” (kingdom of ends). That is why modern legal systems influenced by the spirit of the Renaissance tend to place nature outside the circle of “justice,” but rather as something whose value depends entirely on its benefits to humans.

Law in the Economic System

In a capitalist economic system, law functions not merely as a regulatory device, but as a normative architecture that institutionalizes anthropocentrism. Capitalism can only operate if individual property rights (private property) are legally recognized and protected. In this framework, law acts as a mechanism of legitimacy: it determines who has the right to control, manage, and exploit land, water, and the resources contained therein. Thus, law is not neutral, but structurally biased towards the construction of human relations as the dominant subject over nature as an object.

Theoretically, capitalism is a production system based on the relationship between capital owners and labor, with the main goal of accumulating profit. Characteristics such as privatization of the means of production, commodification of labor, and expansion of production not only impact social relations, but also expand the logic of exploitation towards nature. At this point, law plays a role as a legal infrastructure of accumulation, which provides normative certainty for the process of resource extraction through licensing regimes, contracts, and investment protection. Global instruments such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) regime demonstrate how international law also consolidates the interests of global capital. Thus, the ecological crisis is not merely a side effect, but an inherent consequence of the legal structure that supports capitalism.

However, criticism of capitalism through socialism does not necessarily dismantle the anthropocentric foundation. Although socialism transfers ownership from individuals to the state, its basic orientation remains the same: nature is seen as a means of production that must be optimized for the benefit of humans. In this context, the difference between capitalism and socialism is distributional, not epistemological. Both maintain the subject–object dichotomy between humans and nature.

Even in Karl Marx's thinking, the relationship between humans and nature remains framed within the logic of production. The concept of “metabolism” between humans and nature does not eliminate the subordinate position of nature, but rather affirms that nature is a medium that must be “processed” for the reproduction of social life. Marx's statement in Capital that humans must “wrestle with nature” indicates that the relationship remains dominant. Ecological reinterpretation efforts by contemporary thinkers such as Kohei Saito are indeed interesting, but have not been able to shift the ontological foundations of Marxism, which are rooted in anthropocentrism.

Historical reality reinforces this argument. Ecological tragedies such as the shrinking of the Aral Sea due to the Soviet Union's industrialization project show that even systems that claim to be anti-capitalist still produce massive ecological damage. This confirms that the problem is not solely with the economic system, but with the way law and development view nature as an instrumental object.

Thus, both capitalism and socialism operate within the same horizon: anthropocentrism. Law, in both systems, functions as a tool of legitimization for human control over nature. From the Greek tradition to modern law, the subject of law is exclusively human (and its creations), while nature is reduced to an object that has neither intrinsic value nor legal standing.

Consequently, environmental law that has developed to date remains anthropocentric environmental law, which provides protection for nature only insofar as it relates to human interests. This explains the contemporary paradox: amidst the proliferation of environmental regulations, ecological damage continues to increase. Law fails to protect nature because it never recognized it as a subject from the outset.

Conclusion

In the end, modern law inherits the same structure, that the subject of law is humans (or human-created legal entities), while nature is positioned solely as an object of law. Consequently, the developing environmental law system remains anthropocentric—anthropocentric environmental law—namely, the protection of nature only to the extent that it supports human survival or prevents economic loss.

This legacy explains why, even though international and national environmental law instruments have been present, the practices of deforestation, marine pollution, and the climate crisis continue. The law has never truly recognized nature as an equal entity before the law. Thus, legal thought is fundamentally born from an anthropocentric perspective, which places humans as the center of value.