Legal Argumentation in the Evolving Climate Regime

Abstract

This chapter explores the evolution of the UN climate regime and its implications for patterns of legal argumentation. The 2015 Paris Agreement introduced three interrelated shifts. First, it brings a shift from a model in which the treaty serves as centralized forum for inter-state standard setting and accountability practices, epitomized by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, to a more decentralized model in which the treaty helps orchestrate a range of state and non-state practices, epitomized by the Paris Agreement. Second, it marks a turn toward non-binding substantive terms, supported by binding procedural terms. Finally, the Paris Agreement shifts from legal accountability practices toward non-legal performance assessment. A practice-based, interactional, account of international law suggests that only the third shift stands to reduce the scope for legal argumentation in the regime. The Paris Agreement’s decentralized approach and its increased reliance on non-binding or procedural terms are unlikely to diminish the salience of legal argumentation.