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Transparency

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Risk Tradeoff Analysis, Public Opinion And Nuclear Safety: A Spanish Case Study, Xiao Recio-Blanco Dec 2013

Risk Tradeoff Analysis, Public Opinion And Nuclear Safety: A Spanish Case Study, Xiao Recio-Blanco

Xiao Recio-Blanco

The 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant opened a heated worldwide debate over nuclear energy. Unfortunately, neither the previous nor current Spanish governments have publicized the evidence used to evaluate the merits of extending the lifespan of Spain’s own Garoña plant. This article uses the Garoña case for a twofold purpose. First, the article analyzes the accountability of Spain’s executive power decisions on potentially catastrophic industrial activities. The paper finds that the lack of appropriate information disclosure duties in Spain may allow the government to abuse its discretion on actions potentially damaging to human health and the environment. …


Disclosure's Effects: Wikileaks And Transparency, Mark Fenster Feb 2012

Disclosure's Effects: Wikileaks And Transparency, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

Constitutional, criminal, and administrative laws regulating government transparency, and the theories that support them, rest on the assumption that the disclosure of information has transformative effects: disclosure can inform, enlighten, and energize the public, or it can create great harm or stymie government operations. To resolve disputes over difficult cases, transparency laws and theories typically balance disclosure’s beneficial effects against its harmful ones. WikiLeaks and its vigilante approach to massive document leaks challenge the underlying assumption about disclosure’s effects in two ways. First, WikiLeaks’s ability to receive and distribute leaked information cheaply, quickly, and seemingly unstoppably enables it to bypass …


Global Law And The Environment, Robert V. Percival Nov 2011

Global Law And The Environment, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

This article explores three areas in which globalization is profoundly affecting the development of a global environmental law. First, countries increasingly are borrowing law and regulatory innovations from one another to respond to common environmental problems. Although this is not an entirely new phenomenon, it is occurring at an unprecedented pace. Second, lawsuits seeking to hold companies liable for environmental harm they have caused outside their home countries are raising new questions concerning the appropriate venue for such transnational liability litigation and the standards courts should apply for enforcement of foreign judgments. Third, nongovernmental organizations are playing an increasingly important …


The Opacity Of Transparency, Mark Fenster Dec 2004

The Opacity Of Transparency, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

The normative concept of transparency, along with the open government laws that purport to create a transparent public system of governance promise the world—a democratic and accountable state above all, and a peaceful, prosperous, and efficient one as well. But transparency, in its role as the theoretical justification for a set of legal commands, frustrates all parties affected by its ambiguities and abstractions. The public’s engagement with transparency in practice yields denials of reasonable requests for essential government information, as well as government meetings that occur behind closed doors. Meanwhile, state officials bemoan the significantly impaired decision-making processes that result …