Transnational Environmental Law最新文献

The Obligation to Conduct Environmental Impact Assessments in the Sustainable Development of Mega-Constellations 巨型星座可持续发展的环境影响评价义务

IF 4.3 1区社会学

Transnational Environmental Law Pub Date : 2026-10-15 DOI: 10.1017/s2047102526100405

Hanhui Zha

{"title":"The Obligation to Conduct Environmental Impact Assessments in the Sustainable Development of Mega-Constellations","authors":"Hanhui Zha","doi":"10.1017/s2047102526100405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102526100405","url":null,"abstract":"The development of satellite mega-constellations promises substantial benefits but also exacerbates environmental risks, including primarily the proliferation of space debris, interference with astronomy, and effects on the atmosphere. This article explains the critical role of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) in ensuring the sustainable development of mega-constellations and argues that EIAs should be regarded as part of existing international space law. On the one hand, heightened environmental risks from space activities render EIAs increasingly relevant, if not indispensable, for implementing the obligations under Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty. On the other hand, while Article III of the Treaty enables the application of general international law on EIAs to outer space, its scope is constrained to activities that are likely to cause a significant adverse impact. The analysis also addresses the operationalization of EIAs with regard to mega-constellations by identifying the responsible state, assessing the significance of environmental impacts, articulating minimum standards, and developing appropriate mechanisms.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149187937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Reactive Climate Litigation: An Analytical Framework for the Criminal Prosecution of Climate Activists 反应性气候诉讼：气候活动家刑事起诉的分析框架

IF 4.3 1区社会学

Transnational Environmental Law Pub Date : 2026-10-01 DOI: 10.1017/s2047102526100429

Marie Desaules

{"title":"Reactive Climate Litigation: An Analytical Framework for the Criminal Prosecution of Climate Activists","authors":"Marie Desaules","doi":"10.1017/s2047102526100429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102526100429","url":null,"abstract":"Among the various types of legal activism, a distinction can be made between proactive and reactive litigation. This distinction hinges on who initiates the legal action: proactive litigation is initiated by plaintiffs, while reactive litigation occurs when the state starts a criminal prosecution in response to activism or dissent. While proactive strategic cases have been documented, reactive criminal trials involving activists remain understudied, especially in legal scholarship. In this article, an analytical framework that mobilizes the concepts of reactive litigation and judicial opportunity is created to systematically analyze 13 criminal prosecution cases relating to climate activism. The analysis will be based on four key elements to highlight the trends that can be observed: (i) the type and targets of the protest action, (ii) the charges brought against the defendant, (iii) the defences mobilized in court, and (iv) the outcomes of the criminal proceedings. This article finds that cross-analysis of the variables across four jurisdictions not only shows the relevance of studying the prosecution of activists as a growing and pressing phenomenon around the world but also provides insight into the trends observed in reactive climate litigation.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"26 1","pages":"1-28"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149123075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The Precautionary Paradox in Environmental Disputes: Navigating Uncertainty and Legal Authority in International Investment Law 环境纠纷中的预防性悖论：国际投资法中的不确定性和法律权威

IF 4.3 1区社会学

Transnational Environmental Law Pub Date : 2026-09-29 DOI: 10.1017/s2047102526100454

Ruojing Wang, Ying Bi

{"title":"The Precautionary Paradox in Environmental Disputes: Navigating Uncertainty and Legal Authority in International Investment Law","authors":"Ruojing Wang, Ying Bi","doi":"10.1017/s2047102526100454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102526100454","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals engage with the precautionary principle (PP) when environmental measures are challenged in the face of scientific uncertainty over ecological harm. An analysis of awards identifies three recurrent treatments: (i) strong risk prevention, (ii) flexible risk management, and (iii) nominal acknowledgement. Across these approaches, the PP fails to supply reviewable criteria for adjudication, resulting in inconsistent outcomes and limited doctrinal coherence. The article argues that the difficulty lies in the absence of a coherent account of the adjudicative function of the PP. Informed by systems theory and Karl-Heinz Ladeur’s concept of stop rules, the article develops a procedural account of the PP, under which the principle operates as a trigger for calibrated proportionality review and the reallocation of the burden of proof. On this view, the PP does not dissolve the precautionary paradox, but renders it adjudicatively workable, enabling tribunals to reach reasoned legal closure under epistemic uncertainty while preserving legal authority.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"95 1","pages":"1-30"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149123076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Between Paradox and Practical Reason: Access to Justice in KlimaSeniorinnen as Front Line of European Climate Litigation 在悖论与实践理性之间：作为欧洲气候诉讼前沿的乌克兰的司法公正

IF 4.3 1区社会学

Transnational Environmental Law Pub Date : 2026-09-28 DOI: 10.1017/s2047102526100442

Francesco Lucherini, Andrea Cerofolini

{"title":"Between Paradox and Practical Reason: Access to Justice in\u0000 KlimaSeniorinnen\u0000 as Front Line of European Climate Litigation","authors":"Francesco Lucherini, Andrea Cerofolini","doi":"10.1017/s2047102526100442","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102526100442","url":null,"abstract":"Standing requirements before the European Court of Human Rights pose significant hurdles for plaintiffs in climate litigation, exposing deep tensions between judicial restraint and legal accountability, redress for vulnerable groups and discrete access to justice. In KlimaSeniorinnen , the Court advanced an evolutive interpretation of victim status and legal representation standards ‘in the light of conditions in contemporary society’, drawing extensively on the international legal framework through the principle of systemic integration. The key doctrinal takeaway is the articulation of justiciable minimum standards of due diligence for climate mitigation under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, situated at the intersection of nearly unattainable individual victimhood and a substantive evolution of locus standi for demonstrably affected vulnerable groups. Although the Court’s reasoning strains several doctrinal conundrums – particularly regarding the interplay between individual victim status and legal representation – it ultimately constitutes a principled increment of legal accountability, commensurate with the necessities brought forward by the prospect of climate collapse.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"42 1","pages":"1-25"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149123293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The Accountability Gap in Multilateral Environmental Agreements: Challenges and Future Pathways 多边环境协定中的问责差距：挑战与未来路径

IF 4.3 1区社会学

Transnational Environmental Law Pub Date : 2026-09-22 DOI: 10.1017/s2047102526100417

Işık Girgiç, Rakhyun E. Kim

{"title":"The Accountability Gap in Multilateral Environmental Agreements: Challenges and Future Pathways","authors":"Işık Girgiç, Rakhyun E. Kim","doi":"10.1017/s2047102526100417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102526100417","url":null,"abstract":"The institutional arrangements of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), notably those organized around conferences of the parties, have given rise to increasingly powerful and autonomous actors in global environmental governance. The expanding authority of these actors has outpaced the development of robust accountability mechanisms, allowing decisions that exceed mandates or undermine other regimes, often without oversight or redress. This accountability gap poses a structural risk to the legitimacy and effectiveness of global environmental efforts. We examine two potential pathways for closing this gap: (i) the Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations, which offer a legal framework for institutional responsibility, and (ii) public accountability mechanisms that promote transparency, contestation, and learning. Each approach has limitations when applied in isolation, but their principles, if adapted to and developed for the specific institutional contexts of MEAs, could jointly inform a more coherent and layered framework of accountability. We propose institutional and policy reforms that link the legal recognition of institutional responsibilities under MEAs with embedded oversight and review mechanisms, laying the groundwork for more credible, responsive, and just global environmental governance.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"36 1","pages":"1-28"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149124473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Cracking a Sledgehammer with a Nut: Provisional Measures for the Climate Change Dilemma in Investor–State Dispute Settlement 以坚果击碎大锤：投资者与国家争端解决中气候变化困境的临时措施

IF 4.3 1区社会学

Transnational Environmental Law Pub Date : 2026-08-12 DOI: 10.1017/s2047102526100430

Fang Gu

{"title":"Cracking a Sledgehammer with a Nut: Provisional Measures for the Climate Change Dilemma in Investor–State Dispute Settlement","authors":"Fang Gu","doi":"10.1017/s2047102526100430","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102526100430","url":null,"abstract":"The intersection of international investment law and climate governance has created a structural challenge for investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS): how to balance regulatory autonomy, investor protection, and collective environmental interests. Existing approaches centred on systemic integration, proportionality, or treaty exceptions during the merits phase remain retrospective and insufficient to address the preventive and collective dimensions of climate change damage. This article proposes a procedural reorientation towards provisional measures as an under-explored yet doctrinally grounded mechanism for addressing climate-related investment disputes. Doctrinally, provisional measures, grounded in tribunals’ inherent powers, embody a preventive procedural logic that allows ISDS to temporarily accommodate community interests alongside investor and state rights. Without purporting to resolve the climate–investment law dilemma, or to displace substantive adjudication on expropriation or fair and equitable treatment, such measures operate within a bounded procedurally oriented space that weighs urgency and irreversibility. By contextually interpreting the established thresholds of prima facie jurisdiction, urgency, necessity, and rights preservation, tribunals can deploy provisional measures not as exceptional remedies, but as instruments of procedural balance in climate-sensitive adjudication. In doing so, this procedural framework enables ISDS to respond to the temporal and collective realities of climate governance while maintaining its consensual legitimacy.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"65 1","pages":"1-26"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148717563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

(Mis)conceptualizing the Future: On the Temporality of the Future in Rights-Based Climate Litigation （错误）概念化未来：论权利型气候诉讼中未来的暂时性

IF 4.3 1区社会学

Transnational Environmental Law Pub Date : 2026-08-12 DOI: 10.1017/s2047102526100387

Bent Bos

引用次数: 0

Beyond the Formalistic Design of ‘Rights’ and ‘Directives’: Framing Environmental Constitutionalism as a Collaborative Model 超越“权利”和“指令”的形式主义设计：将环境宪政构建为一种合作模式

IF 4.3 1区社会学

Transnational Environmental Law Pub Date : 2026-08-05 DOI: 10.1017/s2047102526100375

Evelyn Li Wang

{"title":"Beyond the Formalistic Design of ‘Rights’ and ‘Directives’: Framing Environmental Constitutionalism as a Collaborative Model","authors":"Evelyn Li Wang","doi":"10.1017/s2047102526100375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102526100375","url":null,"abstract":"Environmental constitutionalism refers to the growing constitutional recognition of the environment. Given the diverse designs of constitutional environmental provisions across the world, environmental constitutionalism is construed broadly to reflect both rights and non-rights provisions related to environmental protection. The constitutional entrenchment of environmental rights is the most common expression of environmental constitutionalism. Yet, such a purely rights-based approach ignores the distinctive constitutional design formulated as non-rights directive principles. Central to this debate is the perceived appropriateness, or inappropriateness, of treatment by courts of directive principles as if they are judicially enforceable rights. By exploring the limitations of this twofold division of environmental constitutionalism into conventional rights and directive principles, this article argues that such an approach positions the enforcement of environmental constitutionalism into the binaries of courts versus legislatures. However, environmental constitutionalism should be repositioned towards a collaborative model, the achievement of which requires interactive dynamics among the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Through a relational perception of separation of powers, this article offers an innovative understanding of environmental constitutionalism by integrating environmental governance with the values of constitutional collaboration, within which shared responsibility for enforcement is placed among the separated powers.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"2 1","pages":"1-24"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148698810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Decolonial Climate Litigation 非殖民气候诉讼

IF 4.3 1区社会学

Transnational Environmental Law Pub Date : 2026-07-06 DOI: 10.1017/s204710252610034x

Phillip Paiement, Juan Auz

引用次数: 0

Health Inequalities, Scientific Evidence, and Climate Litigation: A Preliminary Transnational Study 健康不平等、科学证据和气候诉讼：一项初步跨国研究

IF 4.3 1区社会学

Transnational Environmental Law Pub Date : 2026-07-06 DOI: 10.1017/s2047102526100351

Anna Galmiche

引用次数: 0