Legitimacy

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Bodansky
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
World Trade Organisation ◽  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Precise Meaning ◽  
Environmental Institutions ◽  
The World ◽  
Commercial Whaling

Compared to ‘illegitimacy’, ‘legitimacy’ has a more precise meaning in political theory and sociology, focusing on the justification and acceptance of political authority – the authority of the International Whaling Commission to ban commercial whaling, for example, or of the World Trade Organisation to review measures adopted pursuant to environmental agreements. A legitimate institution is one that has a right to govern – for example, based on tradition, expertise, legality, or public accountability – rather than one relying on the mere exercise of power. In recent years, legitimacy has begun to emerge as an issue not only in international law generally but also in international environmental law more specifically. This article deals with the issue of legitimacy. It first looks at the concept of legitimacy and then presents a typology of legitimacy theories, why legitimacy is a growing issue in international environmental law, and alternative bases of legitimacy, focusing on democracy, participation and transparency, and expertise and effectiveness. The article concludes by considering how to develop trust in international environmental institutions.

Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law: Introduction

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 571-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
KISHAN KHODAY ◽  
VANESSA LAMB ◽  
TYLER MCCREARY ◽  
KARIN MICKELSON ◽  
USHA NATARAJAN ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Sustainable Livelihoods ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Behavioural Patterns ◽  
The World

Environmental harm is of increasing concern to peoples and states all over the world, whether in relation to ensuring access to healthy air, water, food, and sustainable livelihoods, or coping with the diversity of challenges posed by changing climates and ecologies. While international lawyers have focused on crafting solutions to environmental problems, less attention is paid to the disciplinary role in fostering harmful and unsustainable behavioural patterns. Environmental issues are usually relegated to the specialized field of international environmental law. This project explores instead the role of nature in the general discipline, arguing that the natural environment is a determinative factor in shaping international law, and that assumptions about nature lie at the heart of disciplinary concepts such as sovereignty, development, economy, property, and human rights.

New Ways to Make International Environmental Law

1992 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Palmer
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Environmental Challenges ◽  
The World ◽  
Environment And Development

The purpose of this article is to suggest new ways to make international law for the environment. The existing methods are slow, cumbersome, expensive, uncoordinated and uncertain. Something better must be found if the environmental challenges the world faces are to be dealt with successfully. Nearly twenty years after the Stockholm Declaration, we still lack the institutional and legal mechanisms to deal effectively with transboundary and biospheric environmental degradation. The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development presents an opportunity to make progress. Unfortunately, my reading of the situation in late 1991 suggests that there is no political will to take decisions that will give us the tools to do the job.

Equity

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelton Dinah
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
Generational Equity ◽  
Perceptions Of Fairness ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
Potential Impact

If perceptions of fairness or equity affect the level of participation and positive action among heterogeneous states, then they are likely to factor in the long-term success of an environmental regime or agreement. This article assesses the potential impact of equity on international environmental law. First, it examines the various meanings attributed to the term ‘equity’ in international law in general, and in international environmental law in particular; the roles equity has played in multilateral environmental agreements; and how different equitable principles are, or may be, implemented in practice. The article then discusses intra-generational equity and inter-generational equity, sovereign equality and equity, distributive justice in international law, principles for determining equitable allocation, and different ways of implementing principles of equity (substantive rules of equity, procedural rules).

Part I Context, Ch.5 Fragmentation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Young Margaret A
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Trade Liberalization ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
Investment Protection ◽  
Environmental Institutions ◽  
International Adjudication ◽  
Fragmentation Of International Law ◽  
Law Making

This chapter examines fragmentation within the field of international environmental law. There is long-standing scholarly engagement with the fragmentation of international law into largely self-contained ‘regimes’ such as trade, investment, the law of the sea, and human rights. Such regimes are of fundamental importance to the governance of environmental matters. Multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) covering specific issues and sectors now number in the hundreds, and at times their aims and methods may be in opposition, while gaps remain especially in implementation. The chapter begins with a discussion of the functional conception of law-making within ‘regimes’, which has origins in both international relations and international law, and argues that the governance of environmental matters does not always (or even most often) happen in the context of environmental treaties and environmental institutions but also within norms and institutions that are constituted to pursue other functions, such as trade liberalization or investment protection. It then considers how international adjudication and the proliferation of international courts and tribunals have special salience for environmental matters. The chapter also looks at coordinating initiatives, including the proposal for a Global Pact for the Environment.

Part VIII Compliance, Implementation, and Effectiveness, Ch.52 Transparency Procedures

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sparks Tom ◽  
Peters Anne
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements

This chapter explores how information obligations on states—to collect, report, or publish—are an important aspect of most modern multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). These have developed both alongside and as part of a wider ‘turn to transparency’ in international law, resulting in traditional forms of reporting, monitoring, and verification being incorporated into a more extensive set of transparency relationships. The chapter examines transparency as an increasingly important aspect of international environmental law, both as an end in itself and as a means of achieving other substantive goals. It frames transparency in international environmental law within the wider transparency turn. The chapter then looks at the techniques that are employed in customary and conventional environmental law to realize transparency, focusing on the compliance-centred, emancipatory, and advocative functions it performs.

scholarly journals TRANSBOUNDARY ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION: UNDERSTANDING THE INTRICACIES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kshitij Bansal
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
International Agencies ◽  
The World ◽  
International Environmental Problems ◽  
Legal Controls

Faced with the enormity and urgency of international environmental problems the world has experienced a political awakening. Although environmental issues are not new for international relations, world leaders have increasingly brought environmental issues from the sidelines to the centre of their negotiation agendas. International conferences and treaties regarding global warming and ozone depletion are but few signs that the world has entered a new age of environmental diplomacy in which environmental issues will share centre-stage with more traditional economic and military concerns. In response to this concern governments, legislatures, and the courts have produced a labyrinth of draft bills, amendments to existing legislation, regulations, drafts of international treaties, and judicial decisions, all creating legal controls of pollution. In order to ascertain scientific information and technological data royal commissions, presidential enquiries, governmental departments, and international agencies have undertaken extensive research programs. Paralleling these developments, international environmental law has started to become a new and an emerging academic discipline. A growing number of commentators, diplomats, and practitioners are concentrating on transboundary and global environmental issues. There has also been a significant increase in the number of law schools all over the world that have started focussing towards this subject. The regime of international environmental law is mainly composed of treaties, customs; general principles of international law and opinio juris. In an attempt to use customary international law to protect the environment, commentators have spent the last two decades in elaborating the rules of state responsibility and liability specifically to address the issues related to transboundary pollution. States have begun to build on this liability regime towards the development of international agreements designed to prevent harmful environmental activity.

Enforcement Mechanisms in International Law and International Environmental Law

elni Review ◽  
2005 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Jutta Brunnée
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Legal Sanctions ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Enforcement Mechanisms ◽  
Common Misconceptions

This essay aims to launch the proceedings of international law on a high note, and to suggest that many common impressions of it are wrong in general, and particularly wrong in the context of international environmental law. Even more particularly, multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) illustrate the maturation and sophistication of international environmental law. If anything, the diversity and flexibility of compliance approaches under MEAs highlight the limited purchase of simple dichotomies such as “binding vs. non-binding” or “enforcement vs. ineffectiveness”. The essay begins by exploring the concept of “enforcement” in international law in general. It suggests that a concept of enforcement as imposition of legal sanctions, or penalties, is unduly narrow. The essay then canvasses some of the main theoretical assumptions about international law and compliance. An exploration of this theoretical context illuminates the reasons underlying common misconceptions about international law and its enforcement, and helps put in perspective the evolution of approaches to compliance in international environmental law. Finally, against the backdrop of these general considerations, the author examines key features of the approaches to compliance and enforcement in international environmental law and MEAs. The aim is to provide a ‘bigger picture’, a context for the detailed discussions of compliance mechanisms that make up the bulk of the conference proceedings.

scholarly journals EISIL: A Gateway To International Environmental Law On The Web

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-273
Author(s):  
Jill Watson
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Electronic Information ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society ◽  
Improve Access ◽  
Electronic Information System

Let me start with a very Brief History of Electronic Information System for International Law (EISIL). More than five years ago, the American Society of International Law (ASIL) began exploring how to bring its expertise and resources to bear on efforts to sort out and improve access to international law information on the World Wide Web. ASIL received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2000 to build an international law information gateway and began the process of assessing how this might be accomplished.

scholarly journals The Dynamic Evolution of International Environmental Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 607
Author(s):  
Karen N Scott
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
21St Century ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Dynamic Evolution ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
International Legal System

This article will explore selected innovations within multilateral environmental agreements that have contributed to the dynamic evolution of international environmental law within the context of the traditional rules relating to treaties, international institutions and state responsibility. It will argue that whilst these innovations undoubtedly push and develop the boundaries of these areas of law, they do not represent a significant departure from the traditional principle of consent that underpins international law more generally. But should they? The period of modern international environmental law (from 1972 to date), which from a lawyer's perspective might be described as dynamic and innovative, has simultaneously witnessed significant and persistent environmental change and degradation across the biosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere. The question for 21st century environmental lawyers is whether international environmental law is fit for the Anthropocene and whether there is sufficient scope for future dynamic evolution within the constraints and structures of the existing international legal system.

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