The Constitution of the Environmental Emergency

The Constitution of the Environmental Emergency PDF Author: Jocelyn Stacey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509920285
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
This book argues for a reframing of environmental law. It starts from the premise that all environmental issues confront lawmakers as emergencies. Environmental issues pose a fundamental challenge to law because it is impossible to reliably predict which issues contain the possibility of an emergency and what to do in response to such an unforeseen event. These features undermine the conventional understanding of the rule of law. This book argues that approaching environmental issues from the emergency perspective leads us to an understanding of the rule of law that requires public justification. This requirement recentres the debates in environmental law around the question of why governance under the rule of law is something worth having in the environmental context. It elaborates what the rule of law requires of decision-makers in light of our ever-present vulnerability to catastrophic environmental harm. Controversial, compelling and above all timely, this book presents an important new perspective on environmental law.

The Constitution of the Environmental Emergency

The Constitution of the Environmental Emergency PDF Author: Jocelyn Stacey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509920285
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book argues for a reframing of environmental law. It starts from the premise that all environmental issues confront lawmakers as emergencies. Environmental issues pose a fundamental challenge to law because it is impossible to reliably predict which issues contain the possibility of an emergency and what to do in response to such an unforeseen event. These features undermine the conventional understanding of the rule of law. This book argues that approaching environmental issues from the emergency perspective leads us to an understanding of the rule of law that requires public justification. This requirement recentres the debates in environmental law around the question of why governance under the rule of law is something worth having in the environmental context. It elaborates what the rule of law requires of decision-makers in light of our ever-present vulnerability to catastrophic environmental harm. Controversial, compelling and above all timely, this book presents an important new perspective on environmental law.

The Constitution of the Environmental Emergency

The Constitution of the Environmental Emergency PDF Author: Jocelyn Stacey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"This thesis argues that environmental issues present an ongoing emergency, and that to understand the relationship between law and the environment we need to take the ongoing emergency seriously. Like emergencies, environmental issues possess two salient epistemic features: the inability to know in advance which issues contain the possibility of catastrophe, and the inability to know in advance what to do in response to a catastrophe. These features undermine the assumption that law can be equated with predetermined legal rules set out by the legislature and enforced by the courts. By developing a framework based on the concept of the environmental emergency, the thesis reveals and critiques the assumptions about law contained in existing accounts of Canadian environmental law. It then offers an account of the rule of law that requires public officials to publicly justify their decisions on the basis of core constitutional principles, namely reasonableness and fairness. In elaborating these principles, I draw out connections between common law constitutionalism and theories of deliberative democracy. I then develop an account of how the administrative state can be governed by a democratic conception of the rule of law. The crux of this account is that it protects the autonomy of individuals, understood as rational and self-determining agents, and their capacity to actively participate in environmental governance. By requiring public officials to publicly justify their decisions on terms that citizens can understand and reasonably accept, this deliberative and constitutional account allows citizens to obey or contest the law. It thereby enables their participation in the project of articulating and re-articulating core constitutional principles. The thesis also explains how creative institutional design is essential to maintaining public justification in the environmental context. On this view, specialized appeals tribunals, auditor generals and ombudsmen are not unfortunate (if necessary) deviations from the rule of law, but a fuller realization of its ideals in the complex regulatory context of environmental decision-making. I argue that well-known environmental principles of sustainable development and precaution can be defended on the basis that they safeguard the relationship between citizens and state that public justification makes possible." --

The Environmental Rights Revolution

The Environmental Rights Revolution PDF Author: David R. Boyd
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774821639
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
The right to a healthy environment has been the subject of extensive philosophical debates that revolve around the question: Should rights to clean air, water, and soil be entrenched in law? David Boyd answers this by moving beyond theoretical debates to measure the practical effects of enshrining the right in constitutions. His pioneering analysis of 193 constitutions and the laws and court decisions of more than 100 nations in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa reveals a positive correlation between constitutional protection and stronger environmental laws, smaller ecological footprints, superior environmental performance, and improved quality of life.

The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory

The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory PDF Author: John S Dryzek
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199548439
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 898

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Book Description
Oxford Handbooks of Political Science are the essential guide to the state of political science today. With engaging contributions from 51 major international scholars, the Oxford Handbook of Political Theory provides the key point of reference for anyone working in political theory and beyond.

The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development

The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development PDF Author: Jorge E. Viñuales
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191510424
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 831

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Book Description
The international community has long grappled with the issue of safeguarding the environment and encouraging sustainable development, often with little result. The 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development was an emphatic attempt to address this issue, setting down 27 key principles for the international community to follow. These principles define the rights of people to sustainable development, and the responsibilities of states to safeguard the common environment. The Rio Declaration established that long term economic progress required a connection to environmental protection. It was designed as an authoritative and comprehensive statement of the principles of sustainable development law, an instrument to take stock of the past international and domestic practice, a guide for the design of new multilateral environmental regimes, and as a reference for litigation. This commentary provides an authoritative and comprehensive overview of the principles of the Declaration, written by over thirty inter-disciplinary contributors, including both leading practitioners and academics. Each principle is analysed in light of its origins and rationale. The book investigates each principle's travaux préparatoires setting out the main points of controversy and the position of different countries or groups. It analyses the scope and dimensions of each principle, providing an in-depth understanding of its legal effects, including whether it can be relied before a domestic or international court. It also assesses the impact of the principles on subsequent soft law and treaty development, as well as domestic and international jurisprudence. The authors demonstrate the ways in which the principles interact with each other, and finally provide a detailed analysis of the shortcomings and future potential of each principle. This book will be of vital importance to practitioners, scholars, and students of international environomental law and sustainable development.

The Right to a Healthy Environment

The Right to a Healthy Environment PDF Author: David R. Boyd
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774824158
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Canada has abundant natural wealth -- beautiful landscapes, vast forests, and thousands of rivers and lakes. The land defines Canadians as a people, yet the country has one of the worst environmental records in the industrialized world. Building on his previous book, The Environmental Rights Revolution (2012), David R. Boyd, one of Canada’s leading environmental lawyers, describes how recognizing the constitutional right to a healthy environment could have a transformative impact by empowering citizens, holding governments and industry accountable, and improving Canada’s green record. The overwhelming majority of the world’s nations now recognize environmental rights through laws, constitutions, treaties, or court decisions. Boyd explores Canada’s history of failed efforts to do the same within this international context and offers three pathways to constitutional recognition of the right to a healthy environment. This important and provocative book provides a blueprint for renewed leadership in protecting human health, the well-being of the planet, and the interests of future generations.

Law, Climate Emergency and the Australian Megafires

Law, Climate Emergency and the Australian Megafires PDF Author: Nicole Rogers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000514730
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
This book addresses the ways in which the Black Summer megafires influenced the development of climate narratives throughout 2020. It analyses the global pandemic, and its ensuing restrictions, as a countervailing force in the production of such narratives. Lives and properties were lost in the spring and summer of 2019 and 2020, when catastrophic bushfires burnt through millions of hectares of mainland Australia. Nearly 3 billion native animals died. And for millions of Australians, and others worldwide, it was through the Australian megafires that the global climate emergency became tangible and concrete, no longer a comfortably deferred, albeit problematic abstraction which could be consigned to future generations to deal with. This book explores the legal and other implications of new understandings of climate emergency arising from the fires, and the emergence of a hierarchy of emergencies as the pandemic came to dominate global and domestic political discourses. It examines narratives of culpability, and legal avenues for seeking retribution from government and big fossil fuel emitters. It also considers the impact of the fires on the burgeoning phenomenon of climate activism, particularly in Australia, and the ways in which pandemic restrictions curtailed such activism. Finally, the book reflects on the fires through the lenses offered by climate fiction, and apocalyptic fiction more generally, in order to consider how these shape, and might shape, our responses to them. This important and timely book will appeal to environmental lawyers and socio-legal theorists; as well as other scholars and activists with interests in climate change and its impact. It is recommended for anyone concerned about current and future climate disasters, and the shortcomings in legal, political and popular responses to the climate crisis.

Emergency Response to Terrorism

Emergency Response to Terrorism PDF Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428981195
Category : Disaster relief
Languages : en
Pages : 103

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Book Description


Manual on Human Rights and the Environment

Manual on Human Rights and the Environment PDF Author: Council of Europe
Publisher: Council of Europe
ISBN: 9287159807
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description
Prepared by government experts from all 46 member states of the Council of Europe, this publication seeks to help promote a better understanding of the relationship between human fights and environmental issues by setting out details of relevant case-law of the European Court of Human Rights and the principles upon which these judgements are based. These include: the right to life (Article 2), the right to respect for family life (Article 8), the right to a fair trial and access to a court (Article 6) and the right to receive and impart information and ideas (Article 10) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Environmental Emergency Response Act

The Environmental Emergency Response Act PDF Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Finance
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Hazardous substances
Languages : en
Pages : 692

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Book Description