New Delhi, March 29 -- Supreme Court judge justice BV Nagarathna on Saturday described environmental law as "hot law", explaining that it operates in real time, grappling with uncertainty, evolving science, and the risk of irreversible harm, unlike traditional legal fields that adjudicate past conduct. Delivering the Justice SB Sinha Memorial Lecture at the National University of Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Ranchi, justice Nagarathna said environmental law is "concerned not only with regulating past conduct, but with governing risk, preventing harm, and managing uncertainty". Drawing on the work of legal scholar Elizabeth Fisher, the judge explained that environmental law is "hot" because it is forward-looking and precautionary, rather than merely corrective. Courts, she said, are often required to act before scientific certainty emerges, making decisions in a dynamic space shaped by competing considerations of science, economics, technology, ethics, and politics. "Scientific knowledge in this field is provisional and evolving; what is considered safe at one point may later be revealed to be harmful," she noted, underlining that legal standards must remain responsive even if it unsettles settled positions. Justice Nagarathna added that environmental law is also "hot" in an institutional sense, as courts and regulators must take decisions under intense public scrutiny and in the shadow of potential ecological damage that may be irreversible. This, she said, demands a form of judicial reasoning that is context-sensitive, precautionary, and anchored in constitutional values....