In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Environmental Law

30 Sep

[Erick Guapizaca Jiménez is an S.J.D. candidate at the University of Michigan Law School, a lecturer at the Universidad Internacional del Ecuador, and an Assistant Editor with Opinio Juris] Once again, the Inter-American Court stands at the edge of history with the Advisory Opinion 32/25 (AO-32/25). This time, the Court addresses a monster of our own making, climate change. Responding to...

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26 Sep

[Digvijay Rewatkar is an LLM candidate at Harvard Law School and an international lawyer with seven years of experience. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the views of his affiliations. This post was drafted before he commenced his course at Harvard Law School.] Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on the readers’ vantage point, the seabed...

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26 Sep

[Digvijay Rewatkar is an LLM candidate at Harvard Law School and an international lawyer with seven years of experience. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the views of his affiliations. This post was drafted before he commenced his course at Harvard Law School.] The Advisory Opinion (AO) of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)...

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26 Sep

[Monica Iyer is an Assistant Professor of law at the Georgia State University College of Law] Climate change-related migration is an issue very much in the public mind, and the question of whether it is legal to send someone back (or refoule them) to a place where they might face human rights harms because of climate change has become a key...

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25 Sep

[David W. Patterson is a PhD candidate at the Groningen Centre for Health Law, Faculty of Law, University of Groningen, and a coordinator of the Human Rights and the Climate Crisis Working Group of the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research.  Benjamin Mason Meier is a Professor of global health policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and...

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25 Sep

[Dr. Fabián Cárdenas is a Professor of international environmental law at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana] The decision of 23 July 2025, issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), displays the progressive yet cautious trend recently adopted by this traditionally orthodox tribunal. With the banners of climate change, the Court, also carry the flag of the progressive development of international law, providing...

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25 Sep

[Dr. Fabián Cárdenas is a Professor of international environmental law at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana] The Advisory Opinion (AO) issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 23 July 2025 portrays the progressive, yet cautious, trend recently adopted by this traditionally orthodox tribunal. With the banners of climate change, the Court also carries the flag of the progressive development of international...

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25 Sep

[María José Alarcón Santillán is an international lawyer and S.J.D. candidate at GW Law, serves as Counsel in the ICJ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change, is a CISDL Fellow, and Regional Co-leader at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. She has advised states on cases before the ICJ, ICSID, ITLOS, and the PCA. Erick Guapizaca is an S.J.D. candidate...

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08 Aug

[Ananya Bhargava (she/her) is a law student at Jindal Global Law School] Introduction Historically in situations of war, international law has maintained fidelity to a strictly parochial understanding of what constitutes “use of force.”  This understanding adheres to the normative belief that “use of force” solely includes armed force. Any deviation from this belief would invariably lead to the unsettling of definite...

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08 Aug

[Donna Cline is a US-licensed criminal practitioner and lead for the Environment Mobile Justice Team at Global Rights Compliance, where she works closely with Ukrainian prosecutors to ensure accountability for war crimes. Julia Tétrault-Provencher is a Canadian lawyer (Quebec Bar) and international lawyer with the Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Mobile Justice Team at Global Rights Compliance in Ukraine.] Legal practitioners and scholars...

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04 Aug

[Marisa McVey is a lecturer in law at Queen's University Belfast. Annalisa Savaresi is professor of international environmental law at the Centre for Climate Change, Energy and Environmental Law, University of Eastern Finland. She also holds a part-time Chair in environmental law at the University of Stirling, Scotland.] State obligations in relation to climate change have come under increasing scrutiny by international courts...

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30 Jul

[Juan Auz is an Ecuadorian lawyer and a postdoctoral researcher at Tilburg University's Law School] On March 14, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) made public a landmark ruling holding Ecuador internationally responsible for the violation of various rights of the Tagaeri and Taromenane, the last remaining indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation (PIAV) in the western Ecuadorian Amazon...

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