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Full-Text Articles in Law

International Investment, Expropriation And Environmental Protection, J. Martin Wagner Sep 2010

International Investment, Expropriation And Environmental Protection, J. Martin Wagner

Golden Gate University Law Review

After a brief description of the relationship between foreign investment and the environment in Part II, the Article will describe the protection against expropriation provided by international agreements, briefly discussing bilateral investment agreements and then detailing the protection provided by NAFTA and the MAI in Part III. Part IV will then describe the challenges to environmental laws that have been brought under NAFTA's investment chapter. Next, Part V will examine the treatment of indirect expropriation under U.S. and international law. Part VI will demonstrate that, under NAFTA and international expropriation and environmental law, environmental measures should not normally give rise …


Ecological Considerations Relating To The Destruction Of Chemical Weapons, Aldo Zammit Borda Jan 2010

Ecological Considerations Relating To The Destruction Of Chemical Weapons, Aldo Zammit Borda

Aldo Zammit Borda

The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) not only establishes a global ban on the development of chemical weapons (CW), it also establishes an international obligation on possessor States to destroy their CW and production facilities. This is a central and mandatory obligation of the CWC, which aims at securing a world free of CW. In view of the risks posed by CW to human health and the environment, the obligation to destroy CW may be seen as directly connected to the right to a healthy environment. While the CWC seeks to set high standards for ensuring the safety of people and …


Legal Techniques For Dealing With Scientific Uncertainty In Environmental Law, Jorge E. Vinuales Jan 2010

Legal Techniques For Dealing With Scientific Uncertainty In Environmental Law, Jorge E. Vinuales

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article analyzes how scientific uncertainty is handled in international environmental law. It identifies ten legal techniques used for this purpose (i.e., precautionary reasoning; framework-protocol approach; advisory scientific bodies; law-making by treaty bodies; managerial approaches to compliance; prior informed consent; environmental impact assessment and monitoring; provisional measures; evidence; and facilitated liability) and links them to four different stages of development of environmental regimes (i.e., advocacy, design, implementation, and reparation). These techniques are illustrated by reference to some fifteen environmental treaties and other instruments as well as through a detailed case study focusing on the climate change regime.


Power, Exit Costs, And Renegotiation In International Law, Timothy Meyer Jan 2010

Power, Exit Costs, And Renegotiation In International Law, Timothy Meyer

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Scholars have long understood that the instability of power has ramifications for compliance with international law. Scholars have not, however, focused on how states’ expectations about shifting power affect the initial design of international agreements. In this paper, I integrate shifting power into an analysis of the initial design of both the formal and substantive aspects of agreements. I argue that a state expecting to become more powerful over time incurs an opportunity cost by agreeing to formal provisions that raise the cost of exiting an agreement. Exit costs - which promote the stability of legal rules - have distributional …


Private Certification Versus Public Certification In The International Environmental Arena, Patricia A. Moye Jan 2010

Private Certification Versus Public Certification In The International Environmental Arena, Patricia A. Moye

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In recent decades, the world's various fisheries have seen a number of problems, primarily depletion of fish stocks due to overfishing. While the UN has created some soft law, including sustainable fishing standards, to deal with the problem of fisheries depletion, no binding international laws currently exist. Several entities have decided to deal with the problem on their own, through eco-labeling programs. The Marine Stewardship Council, a private entity not directly affiliated with the government of any country, has created such a program. In addition, some governments have created similar programs, including Japan through its Marine Eco-Label Japan program. While …


Climate Change, Fragmentation, And The Challenges Of Global Environmental Law: Elements Of A Post-Copenhagen Assemblage, William Boyd Jan 2010

Climate Change, Fragmentation, And The Challenges Of Global Environmental Law: Elements Of A Post-Copenhagen Assemblage, William Boyd

Publications

The 2009 United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen has been widely viewed as a failure -a referendum in the eyes of many on the top-down, comprehensive approach to climate governance embodied in the Kyoto Protocol and carried forward in efforts to negotiate a successor regime. Despite a modest agreement on future work toward a new agreement, the most recent climate meeting in Cancún, Mexico reinforces this view, underscoring the conclusion that Copenhagen represents an important inflection point for international climate policy. Although much of the post-Copenhagen commentary has correctly identified various problems, even fatal flaws, with the process, very little …


A Green Road To Development: Environmental Regulations And Developing Countries In The Wto, Jonathan Skinner Jan 2010

A Green Road To Development: Environmental Regulations And Developing Countries In The Wto, Jonathan Skinner

Publications

The WTO framework can accommodate enforceable environmentally protective measures.