The Rule of International (Environmental) Law and Complex Problems

The chapter highlights the main features of climate change as a complex policy challenge. Drawing on the interactional account of international law it sets out the key traits of legality and the rule of law in the international context. It focuses primarily on how treaty-based law has evolved to grapple with complexity on the one hand, and meeting the demands of the rule of law on the other. The 2015 Paris Agreement, which was adopted under the auspices of the FCCC and employs an unprecedented range of legal ‘modes’, is taken as the key example. It is argued that the ‘hard’ vs ‘soft’ law distinction is not the most informative metric when it comes to exploring the trajectory of the international rule of law. Analytic attention is most fruitfully directed to the distinctive traits of legal norms and practices; traits that transcend traditional conceptions of formality and informality.