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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Unbearable Licence Of Being The Executive: A Response To Stacey’S Permanent Environmental Emergency, Bruce Pardy
The Unbearable Licence Of Being The Executive: A Response To Stacey’S Permanent Environmental Emergency, Bruce Pardy
Osgoode Hall Law Journal
This article responds to Jocelyn Stacey’s “The Environmental Emergency and the Legality of Discretion in Environmental Law.” In her article, Stacey attempts to establish the legitimacy of unfettered executive discretion to deal with environmental issues, but the justification that she provides is not up to the task. She asserts that all environmental issues are emergencies, but she does not explain why they are so. She proposes to resolve the problem of executive discretion by redefining the rule of law, thereby rendering it an empty shell. Environmental protection and the rule of law do not push in opposite directions. Instead, it …
The Environmental Emergency And The Legality Of Discretion In Environmental Law, Jocelyn Stacey
The Environmental Emergency And The Legality Of Discretion In Environmental Law, Jocelyn Stacey
Osgoode Hall Law Journal
This article argues that environmental issues confront us as an ongoing emergency. The epistemic features of serious environmental issues – the fact that we cannot reliably distinguish ex ante between benign policy choices and choices that may lead to environmental catastrophe – are the same features of an emergency. This means that, like emergencies, environmental issues pose a fundamental challenge for the rule of law: They reveal the necessity of unconstrained executive discretion. Discretion is widely lamented as a fundamental flaw in Canadian environmental law, which undermines both environmental protection and the rule of law itself. Through the conceptual framework …
The Promise Of The Rule Of (Environmental) Law: A Reply To Pardy’S Unbearable Licence, Jocelyn Stacey
The Promise Of The Rule Of (Environmental) Law: A Reply To Pardy’S Unbearable Licence, Jocelyn Stacey
Osgoode Hall Law Journal
This short reply clarifies and defends the argument presented in “The Environmental Emergency and the Legality of Discretion in Environmental Law.” It responds to the arguments that were made, and that could have been made, in Pardy’s critique “An Unbearable Licence.” The reply further develops the public-justification conception of the rule of law, arguing that it is at home within Canadian public law. It also argues that this conception of the rule of law highlights possibilities for future research directions in Canadian environmental law.