Environmental Law

[Reinhold Gallmetzer is Chair of the Board of Director for the Center for Climate Crimes Analysis (“CCCA”) and an Appeals Counsel for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Nema Milaninia is an Advisory Board member of CCCA and formerly a Trial Attorney for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.  The views expressed herein are those of...

[Darryl Robinson is an Associate Professor at Queen’s University Faculty of Law (Canada), specializing in international criminal justice. This is part of a series of blog posts examining International Criminal Law and the Protection of the Environment, and stems from an expert meeting group convened at the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law in February 2020.] In...

[Richard J. Rogers is Executive Director of Climate Counsel and a founding partner of Global Diligence LLP. This piece is part of a series of blog posts examining International Criminal Law and the Protection of the Environment, and stems from an expert meeting group convened at the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law in February 2020.] In...

For fans of science fiction and for certain investors, the eventuality of space mining is a given, despite recent setbacks. The extraction of resources from the Moon and other celestial bodies —such as mining asteroids for precious metals, harvesting helium-3 from lunar regolith, or using ice on the Moon for a moonbase—is described as having the potential of a “New...

[Gina Heathcote is a Reader in Gender Studies and Public International Law at SOAS University of London and author of Feminist Dialogues on International Law: successes, tensions, futures (OUP 2019) and Michelle Staggs Kelsall is a Lecturer in Public International Law at SOAS University of London and Co-Founder of ATLAS (Acting Together: Law, Advice, Support) whose mission is to empower,...

[Ntina Tzouvala is an ARC Laureate Postdoctoral Fellow at Melbourne Law School.] Francisco de Vitoria was obsessed with food. I do not refer here to his private habits, but rather to the importance he assigned to the consumption of raw food and cannibalism (real or imagined) as markers of savagery. Indeed, imaginaries of cannibalism were central to the imperialist imaginary, including that of international lawyers, and were often mobilised...

[Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli is Lecturer in Law and Deputy Director of the Climate Law and Governance Centre at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London.] What can a global health crisis tell us about international environmental law? To answer this question, this short piece maps the interconnections between the COVID-19 pandemic and international environmental law at three stages of the crisis: its origins, policy responses, and...

[Siddharth S. Aatreya is an LLM Candidate in International Law at the University of Cambridge  and a General Editor of the Cambridge International Law Journal.] The Canadian Supreme Court’s decision in Nevsun Resources v. Araya has shone new light on the debate around the horizontal application of international law, particularly international human rights norms. With a 5-4 majority, the court held that Nevsun, a Vancouver-based...

[Waritsara Rungthong is Project Manager of the Refugee Rights Litigation Project in Bangkok, Thailand. Caroline Stover is Asia Programme Officer at ARTICLE 19 and a legal advisor to the Refugee Rights Litigation Project.] On 24 December 2019, the Royal Thai Government approved a regulation with the aim to establish a national screening mechanism  to manage “aliens” who cannot return to their country of domicile.  With the regulation adopted as...

Apple, Google (through its parent company Alphabet, Inc), Dell, Microsoft and Tesla have been named as defendants in what could be a landmark case pertaining to the use of child labour in the mining of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The case, which is a  class complaint for injunctive relief and damages has been brought by the US based International Rights Advocates (IRA) on behalf...

[Noah M. Sachs is a Professor of Law and the Director of the Merhige Center for Environmental Studies at the University of Richmond School of Law] This December, the Paris Agreement turns four years old, still in its toddlerhood. Will it prove to be a durable treaty, maturing and strengthening over time? Will it be effective when it reaches middle age...