Law Commons^™

Jumping The Pond: Transnational Law And The Future Of Chemical Regulation, Noah M. Sachs

Vanderbilt Law Review

Just as domestic pollution can cause transnational externalities, domestic environmental regulation can create transnational ripple effects in other jurisdictions. In this Article, I show how chemical regulation-long a weak link in the network of U.S. environmental laws-is about to be reshaped and reformed through the extraterritorial ripple effects of new European Union legislation. Contributing to both international law and environmental law scholarship, this Article shows how transnational information flows can be harnessed to end the longstanding drought of data on chemical toxicity in the United States.

Part I of this Article critiques the U.S. chemical regulatory regime, arguing that a …

Unaccountable? The United Nations, Emergency Powers, And The Rule Of Law, Simon Chesterman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

For a body committed to the rule of law in theory, the applicability of the rule of law to the United Nations in practice remains oddly unclear. This Article will not consider the personal responsibility of UN officials, who generally enjoy personal or functional immunity from legal process in the territories where they work. Rather the focus of this Article is on the quasi-constitutional question of the liability of the organization itself. As the United Nations has assumed more state-like functions-in particular through the coercive activities of its Security Council--the question of what limits exist on the powers thus exercised …

Strengthening International Regulation Through Transnational New Governance: Overcoming The Orchestration Deficit, Kenneth W. Abbott, Duncan Snidal

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

A new kind of international regulatory system is spontaneously arising out of the failure of international "Old Governance" (i.e., treaties and intergovernmental organizations) to adequately regulate international business. Nongovernmental organizations, business firms, and other actors, singly and in novel combinations, are creating innovative institutions to apply transnational norms to business. These institutions are predominantly private and operate through voluntary standards. The Authors depict the diversity of these new regulatory institutions on the "Governance Triangle," according to the roles of different actors in their operations. To analyze this complex system, we adapt the domestic "New Governance" model of regulation to the …

Micro-Offsets And Macro-Transformation: An Inconvenient View Of Climate Change Justice, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Brooke A. Ackerly, Fred E. Forster

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We have been asked to examine climate change justice by discussing the methods of allocating the costs of addressing climate change among nations. Our analysis suggests that climate and justice goals cannot be achieved by better allocating the emissions reduction burdens of current carbon mitigation proposals — there may be no allocation of burdens using current approaches that achieves both climate and justice goals. Instead, achieving just the climate goal without exacerbating justice concerns, much less improving global justice, will require focusing on increasing well-being and inducing fundamental changes in development patterns to generate greater levels of well-being with reduced …