Law Commons^™

Status Report On Principles Of International And Human Rights Law Relevant To Climate Change, Katelyn Horne, Maria Antonia Tigre, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The report aims to provide high-level guidance on the legal issues to be analyzed by the ICJ on the advisory opinion request on climate change. The status report addresses (i) advisory proceedings before the ICJ, including the Court’s jurisdiction and procedure (Section II), and (ii) key legal principles relevant to the request for an advisory opinion, including principles of international environmental law and international human rights law (Section III). The report identified, in a non-exhaustive manner, key relevant principles of international environmental law, key relevant principles of international human rights law, and issues of intergenerational equities that apply to the …

Towards A New International Law Of The Atmosphere?, Peter H. Sand, Jonathan B. Wiener

Faculty Scholarship

Inclusion of the topic ‘protection of the atmosphere’ in the current work programme of the UN International Law Commission (ILC) reflects the long overdue recognition of the fact that the scope of contemporary international law for the Earth’s atmosphere extends far beyond the traditional discipline of ‘air law’ as a synonym for airspace and air navigation law. Instead, the atmospheric commons are regulated by a ‘regime complex’ comprising a multitude of economic uses including global communications, pollutant emissions and diffusion, in different geographical sectors and vertical zones, in the face of different categories of risks, and addressed by a wide …

Book Review: Differential Treatment In International Environmental Law, Maxwell O. Chibundu

Faculty Scholarship

A review of Differential Treatment in International Environmental Law by Phillippe Cullet. Brookfield, Ashgate Publishing Co., 2003.

From Schweizerhalle To Baia Mare: The Continuing Failure Of International Law To Protect Europe's Rivers, Aaron Schwabach

Faculty Scholarship

Beginning on January 31, 2000, at least 100,000 cubic meters of highly polluted water escaped from a tailings dam at the Aurul gold mine in Baia Mare, Romania. The water flowed into the Somes, Tisza, and Danube Rivers, causing enormous environmental damage. Most of the damage occurred in Hungary, downstream from Baia Mare. Hungarian politicians called the spill “the first, most serious environment[al] catastrophe in the 21st century,” and “the worst ecological disaster in central Europe since Chernobyl in 1986.”

More striking than the resemblance to the Chernobyl disaster, though, was the resemblance to another 1986 environmental catastrophe: the Sandoz …

Environmental Damage Resulting From The Nato Military Action Against Yugoslavia, Aaron Schwabach

Faculty Scholarship

During the 1999 war between NATO and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, NATO targeted and destroyed chemical plants and storage facilities at Pancevo, Kragujevac, and elsewhere. A United Nations inspection team found that the NATO attacks had caused measurable, but not catastrophic, environmental damage wityin the territory of Yugoslavia. This article explores the historical evolution and current status of the body of law regarding protection of the environment during wartime, as well as the legality of NATO's actions. It concludes that NATO probably did not violate international law as it currently stands. However, the postwar reactions of states, including the …