scholarly journals To exploit or not to exploit: The structure and development of arguments over the use of wetlands

2013 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Tiina Korvela
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Legal Regimes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
Insight Into

This paper considers the discourse surrounding the exploitation of wetlands (also called marshlands, bogs, mires and peatlands) in Finland. The focus of the paper is on the development of the arguments used in the discourse – thus the paper also gives an insight into how the legal regimes concerning wetlands have developed. The arguments are analysed using the dualistic and deconstructive model developed in Critical Legal Studies by Martti Koskenniemi. The hypothesis is that, to some extent, the model developed for international law can be adapted to fit national laws, but that significant problems may still arise. Throughout the history of discourse on wetlands, legal arguments have essentially dealt with the conflict between the conservation of wetlands or their exploitation for peat, which is a source of energy. Three arguments are discussed in this paper: 1) The ‘sovereignty argument’; 2) The ‘no harm argument’; and 3) The ‘climate change argument’. The sovereignty argument has been dominant from the beginning of the industrialised production of peat, but the no harm argument has been steadily gaining weight. Interestingly, the climate change argument lacks traction in the discourse even though the importance of wetlands in adaptation to climate change is common knowledge. This paper argues that regional and national authorities use legislation and the no harm argument in innovative ways. These innovations may be useful for the aims underlying the climate change argument.

scholarly journals Teoria crítica e direito internacional: uma visão pachukaniana de China Miéville

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-174
Author(s):  
Luiz Felipe Brandao Osorio
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Legal Relationship ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One

RESUMO:Dentro do emaranhado teórico cunhado como teoria crítica do direito, cabe aqui resgatar a sua vertente mais radical, aquela que vai à recôndita essência do fenômeno jurídico, e que consequente perpassa a face em que suas fraturas ficam mais expostas: a teoria materialista do direito internacional. O britânico China Miéville brinda-nos com uma reflexão original sobre a seara internacionalista, partindo e retomando as pistas legadas por Evguiéni Pachukanis, no início do século XX, para atingir o cume da crítica do direito, pela teoria da forma mercantil, ressaltando o caráter violento, de coerção, presente inerentemente na relação jurídica. É neste mundo, o do império do direito, é que reinam a miséria e o horror cotidianos e banalizados. ABSTRACT:Within the theoretical entanglement coined as critical legal studies, it is needed to address its most radical aspect, that goes inside the hidden essence of the legal phenomenon, and which consequently touches the face in which its fractures are most exposed: the materialist theory of international law. British China Miéville brings us an original reflection on the internationalist scenario, starting with and returning to the trails left by the early 20th century by Evguiéni Pachukanis to reach the summit of the critique of law, by the theory of commodity form, emphasizing the violent side, coercive, inherent in the legal relationship. It is in this world, the one of the rule of law, that daily and banal misery and horror reign

scholarly journals Litigating climate change through international law: Obligations strategy and rights strategy

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 933-951
Author(s):  
Maiko Meguro
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Consensus ◽  
International Courts ◽  
New Principal ◽  
Environmental Damages ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
Injured Party

AbstractLitigation has presented itself as a serious means to vindicate normative commitments about climate change by forcing governments to review their policy priorities. Today, the use of such litigation is not limited to the domestic arena. International law now provides the new principal avenue for such litigation. Two litigation strategies stand out: obligations strategy and rights strategy. Obligations strategy consists of bestowing an erga omnes character to existing obligations regarding the protection of the global environment, thereby providing standing for a non-injured party before international courts. Rights strategy, on the other hand, significantly increases in practice. It consists in the invocation, before national and international courts, of remedies for environmental damages through the legal categories of human rights law.This article sheds light on the potential and limits of these litigation strategies in international law. The argument builds on the specific evolution in the legal architecture of international obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The current structure of the UNFCCC now makes it substantially impossible to bring a claim against individual states regarding their specific measures against climate change. The article, by referring to the history of drafting which produced the specific structure, questions the ability of these litigation strategies to remedy the lack of international consensus and to accommodate the technical intricacy of how to turn normative commitments into actual action for climate change.

scholarly journals Slaying the Leviathan: Critical Jurisprudence and The Treaty of Waitangi

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 683
Author(s):  
K Upston-Hooper
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
International Law ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Treaty Of Waitangi ◽  
Legal Thinking

This article considers the perspectives of four contributors to the current discourse on the Treaty of Waitangi: Professor Jane Kelsey, Dr Paul McHugh, Professor F M Brookfield and Moana Jackson.  The jurisprudential underpinnings of each authors arguments are examined.  The article focuses on the degree to which two new forms of jurisprudential thought, Critical Legal Studies and Critical Race Theory, have informed the Treaty discourse. The article concludes that, although such critical jurisprudence has yet to permeate New Zealand jurisprudence in any meaningful way, Critical Race Theory could help transform post-settler legal thinking. This article was awarded the Quentin-Baxter LLM prize in Public and International Law in 1997.

The Ottoman Empire and International Law

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Full Member ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
The 19Th Century

The Ottoman Empire has long been a marginal subject in both the history and theory of international law. With the imperial turn in historiography and the postcolonial turn to history in legal studies, researchers challenge the stereotype of “the Sick Man of Europe,” paying due attention to the Ottomans’ own understanding of international law and society. Most importantly, throughout its centuries-long existence, the Ottoman Empire did not find itself vis-à-vis a monolithic, stable, and ready-made set of rules and ideas we today refer to as international law. On the contrary, interactions with the Ottomans—the Other par excellence for Christian Europe—helped transform droit public européen into modern international law. Neither the Islamic nor the Christian precepts predetermined this course of events. “Islamic” explanation was of little help in understanding the Ottomans’ relationship with the European powers. Notwithstanding the Islamic ideal of Holy War, the Ottoman Empire was among the key actors in the European balance of power. In the 19th century, however, Europeans increasingly established discrimination against Muslim Ottomans as a rule in international law, rarely perceiving their desire to be a full member of international society. Overall, the Ottoman Empire offers a fresh perspective for a truly universal history of international law.

Beyond Texts? Towards a Material Turn in the Theory and History of International Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Daniel Ricardo Quiroga-Villamarín
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Social Law ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Cambridge School

Abstract While the history of international law has been mainly dominated by intellectual history, the neighboring humanities and social sciences have witnessed a ‘material turn.’ Influenced by the new materialisms, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists have highlighted the role of objects and nonhuman infrastructures in the making of the social. Law, however, has been conspicuously absent from these discussions. Only until recently, things began to be studied as instruments of – global – regulation. In this article, I trace an intellectual history of the intellectual history of international law, contextualizing it since its inception in the so-called ‘Cambridge School’ to its spread into the legal field via the Critical Legal Studies movement and its final import into international law in the last two decades. I conclude arguing that international legal historians can depart from the ‘well-worn paths’ of intellectual and conceptual history to engage with the materiality (past, present, and future) of global governance.

Relationships, Climate Change, and the Robins of Spring

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 17-20
Author(s):  
Mikhaela E. Young
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Human Spirit ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Large Piece ◽  
Weather Patterns ◽  
Long Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Storytelling is a powerful way to explore climate change on a local level. Through listening to local elders, we get insight into the differences in weather patterns over a long period of time. More importantly, we gain insight into a broader picture of what climate, weather, and nature mean to human relationships, not only the relationship to weather, but to culture, myth, and life. By observing and listening closely, we learn to remember that nature speaks to us, is a large piece of the human spirit, and contains within itself a history of humankind.

Letter to the Editors of the Symposium

1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martti Koskenniemi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
Academic Quality ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
The Way

As I started to think about how to respond to your kind invitation to participate in the symposium on method in international law, and what to write to the readers of the Journal, I soon noticed that it was impossible for me to think about my—or indeed anybody’s—“method” in the way suggested by the symposium format. This was only in part because I felt that your (and sometimes others’) classification of my work as representative of something called “critical legal studies” failed to make sense of large chunks of it whose labeling as “CLS” might seem an insult to those in the American legal academy who had organized themselves in the 1970s and early 1980s under that banner. You may, of course, have asked me to write about “CLS” in international law irrespectively of whether I was a true representative of its method (whatever that method might be). Perhaps I was only asked to explain how people generally identified as “critics” went about writing as they did. But I felt wholly unqualified to undertake such a task. Dozens of academic studies had been published on the structure, history and ideology of critical legal studies in the United States and elsewhere. Although that material is interesting, and often of high academic quality, little of it describes the work of people in our field sometimes associated with critical legal studies—but more commonly classed under the label of “new approaches to international law.“1 In fact, new writing in the field was so heterogeneous, self-reflective and sometimes outright ironic that the conventions of academic analysis about “method” would inevitably fail to articulate its reality.

scholarly journals Climate Change and Regulation in International and Regional Level, Especially the Built Environment

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-67
Author(s):  
Zsuzsanna Putnoki
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
European Union ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
Regional Level ◽  
The European Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Build Environment ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract The article starts with a brief insight into the history of climate change, with a scope on the international and legal aspects of ever-changing regulations. The regional level is in the article is The European Union, as the only regional economic integration organization under the Kyoto Protocol. It deals with the United Nation’s international agreements like UNFCCC its Kyoto’s Protocol and the Post-Kyoto era. It also analyses the EU’s system in the climate change law with correspondence the international rules. Comparison between international and regional legislation in the climate change is used as a tool of analysis. Finally an insight is given into a special field in the climate change, the build environment, reflecting on the related United Nation’s recommendation and the EU’s regulation.

Can We Save the Blue Half of Our Planet?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
David Freestone
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
Natural Ecosystems ◽  
Legal Regimes ◽  
Scientific Report ◽  
The Law

We already know that the ocean is at a crisis point. For the last twenty years and more, scientific report after report has flagged the increasing decline of ocean biodiversity and the damaging impacts of human activities –including over-extraction of resources and pollution, by plastic, of course, but overwhelmingly by anthropogenic climate change. It is only by allowing wildness to return –allowing natural ecosystems to return and heal themselves can we save the planet from ourselves. There are already two complex legal regimes governing both the ocean and climate change: the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC) and the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). However, it appears, “the Law of the Sea and the Climate Change regimes are two of the giants of the international law treaty arena, yet ... they appear like ships that pass in the night.” How do we move forward on saving the blue half of our endangered planet?

scholarly journals Entre a apologia e a utopia: a política do Direito Internacional

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martti Koskenniemi
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
Legal Argument ◽  
Legal Studies

Esta é uma síntese preliminar do estruturalismo abordado em meu livro From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument [“Da apologia à utopia: a estrutura do argumento jurídico internacional”] (Helsinki, 1989). O texto foi publicado no primeiro número do European Journal of International Law, em 1990, e serve de base para a leitura de todo o meu trabalho posterior. O artigo é inspirado em escritos ligados à tradição dos Estudos Críticos do Direito (Critical Legal Studies) nos Estados Unidos, sobretudo os do professor David Kennedy (Faculdade de Direito de Harvard). Contudo, remete também à linguística estruturalista (Saussure), à teoria da argumentação (Perelman) e ao misto de hermenêutica analítica e teoria crítica que constituiu a ortodoxia da teoria finlandesa do direito nos anos 1980. O objetivo central aqui é mostrar de que modo a indeterminação opera no âmbito da argumentação jurídica internacional. O texto encaminha-se a uma crítica imanente do direito internacional: isto é, a uma crítica pautada em premissas que são elas próprias adotadas pelo discurso profissional do direito internacional . Na medida em que não há fechamento necessário a esse discurso, mas os argumentos prosseguem interminavelmente, qualquer fechamento deve proceder de fora das estruturas do próprio direito, podendo ser caracterizado como uma política do direito internacional.

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