Bilateral Investment Treaties as a Tool for Global Climate Governance?
11.09.2024
International Investment Law (IIL) has long been understood as counterproductive to adopting effective climate change policy. As IIL aims for predictable investment protection, International Climate Change Law (ICCL) requires flexibility...
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Is It Time?
10.09.2024
While the UN and almost every region around the world have explicitly recognized the right to a healthy environment, there is one region that still lacks this right: Europe. But...
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Saving the Climate in Strasbourg? – A Critical Look at the European Court of Human Rights’ Climate Cases
07.07.2024
On 9th April 2024, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights issued decisions in three significant climate change cases. In this edition of the Current Issues in...
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The ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change and the Law of the Sea – What follows from the Qualification of GHG Emissions as Marine Pollution?
10.06.2024
The ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change and the Law of the Sea from 21 May 2024 is a landmark decision. Not only does the ITLOS define GHG emissions from...
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ECtHR Favours 1.5-Degree Limit
05.06.2024
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled in Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland that the protection of life and health under Article 8 ECHR against climate...
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Racialised Climate Justice
01.06.2024
9 April 2024 was a big day for international lawyers. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rendered judgment in three major climate change cases. One of these much-anticipated decisions,...
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- Book Review
- Symposium
- Positive Obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights: Within and Beyond Boundaries
Climate Change and Positive Obligations in the ECHR
29.05.2024
Stoyanova’s book, Positive Obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights: Within and Beyond Boundaries, rigorously analyses positive obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), proposing a characterisation...
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The A Sud v. Italy Case after the KlimaSeniorinnen Judgment
24.05.2024
Just as climate litigation is on the rise globally, increasingly more climate cases are brought before Italian courts. On February 26, 2024, the Civil Tribunal of Rome has rendered its...
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Klimaklagen
06.05.2024
„Klimaschutz jetzt Menschenrecht“. So formuliert es ein Kommentar in dem bekannten deutschen Rechtsmagazin LTO. Und das beschreibt tatsächlich ziemlich genau das, was der Europäische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte (EGMR) am 09....
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Resisting the Allure of Future Generations’ Rights
19.04.2024
On 9 April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered much-anticipated judgments in three emblematic climate change cases: Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and others v. Switzerland, Carême v. France,...
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How Do You Like Your Coffee? Green!
23.02.2024
More than two billion cups – that is the global amount of coffee we are consuming every day. Notwithstanding its value as a culinary treat and a remedy for staying...
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Back to the Future: Viewing Emerging Climate Risk Through a Precautionary Lens
26.10.2023
Naimeh Masumy
Amanda J. Lee
This piece explores the utility of the precautionary principle as a tool available to investment tribunals tasked with assessing measures adopted by States to address climate-related risks. To date, little...
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Bridging Jurisprudence and Ecology
25.10.2023
Earlier this year, the United Nations General Assembly filed a request for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice following the adoption resolution on 29 March. The request...
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The Stateless Paradox
23.10.2023
Climate change poses many challenges for International Law. One issue that has become the subject of much discussion in both academic discourse and in political practice is the unique situation...
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Why a Court Alone Won’t Bring Us to Heaven
12.10.2023
On 27 September 2023, the case of Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and 32 Others (no. 39371/20) was heard by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human...
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Children as Agents of Change
05.10.2023
The Committee on the Rights of the Child (Committee) has recently published its new General Comment No. 26 (GC26) on Children’s rights and the environment with a special focus on...
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- Symposium
- Progress and International Law: A Cursed Relationship?
Towards an (Im)possible Polis: Legal Imagination and State Continuity
20.09.2023
Thomas Baty once quipped that ‘[i]nternational law, it is generally agreed, has something to do with states’. By opening The Canons of International Law in this manner, Baty draws our...
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- Symposium
- Progress and International Law: A Cursed Relationship?
Progress and Linear Time: How to Rethink International Law to Account for Ecologically Precarious Presents?
19.09.2023
We live in the ‘era of global boiling’, says UN Secretary-General Guterres, as July 2023 set to be the hottest month on record. While the ecological conditions of planetary life...
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Protecting Human Rights During the Climate Crisis
04.09.2023
Pranav Ganesan
Helen Keller
This blogpost was inspired by a question that arose in an international climate case concerning emissions reductions obligations under human rights law. During the oral proceedings of KlimaSeniorinnen and Others...
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International Problems Require International Answers
12.07.2023
This year, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is expected to deal with several climate change cases, through which the complainants seek to hold their countries of origin responsible...
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Sea-Level Rise at the Security Council
08.05.2023
In what has been termed a ‘signature event’ of the Maltese Presidency of the United Nations Security Council (the Council), the latter held an open debate on the implications of...
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A Court, Not a Policymaker
31.03.2023
On Wednesday, under the eyes of great public interest, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) opened a chapter to what may become the ECtHR’s greatest...
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Post-COP27 Thoughts on Greening the Cape Town Convention
13.03.2023
In June 2022, the governing council of UNIDROIT, a Rome-based intergovernmental organization with the objective to harmonize international private law across countries through uniform rules, discussed proposals for their upcoming...
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Rockhopper v. Italy and the Tension between ISDS and Climate Policy
21.12.2022
On 23 August 2022, a Tribunal constituted under the auspices of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) handed down a long-awaited Award in the case of Rockhopper v. Italy. The investor’s...
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Rising Before Sinking: The Landmark Decision of the UN Human Rights Committee in Daniel Billy et al. v. Australia
21.11.2022
In its groundbreaking views on Billy et al. v. Australia the UN Human Rights Committee found that Australia failed to adequately protect members of an indigenous community present in four...
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Dealing with Loss and Damage at COP27
18.11.2022
The fact that the topic of "loss and damage" was placed at the top of the agenda in the run-up to COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh is a climate diplomacy milestone....
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Legal and Judicial Responses to Disaster Displacement in Italy, Austria and Sweden
19.10.2022
Chiara Scissa
Francesca Biondi Dal Monte
Matthew Scott
Margit Ammer
Monika Mayrhofer
Climate change and the growing climate crisis are expected to force more and more people to leave their homes. EU law and policy, however, do not explicitly address disaster displacement,...
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Tiptoeing Around the Right to Life
04.10.2022
When the UN Human Rights Committee published its views on the case of Billy et al. v. Australia (Torres Strait Islanders) on September 23rd 2022, it made history as the...
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Intergenerational Justice: From Courtroom to Politics?
29.08.2022
How to think long term in a short-term world? This is the question at the heart of Roman Krznaric’ book ‘The Good Ancestor’. Long-term thinking implies taking future generations into...
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Germany’s “Fair Share” of Climate Change Jurisprudence
17.05.2021
Germany has now its own landmark climate case. In its recent decision on the Climate Protection Act (CPA), the Constitutional Court did not follow all of the claimant’s submissions and...
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The impacts of climate change on the humanitarian system: towards truly long-term cooperative action
05.03.2021
On 1 December 2020, the German Federal Foreign Office hosted one of five virtual launches of the 2021 Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) in Berlin. The GHO, which is published annually...
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Climate migrants – How German courts take the environment into account when considering non-refoulement
03.03.2021
In a recent landmark decision concerning an Afghan national a German Higher Administrative Court declared a ban on deportation (non-refoulement) based on German immigration law in conjunction with international human...
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Quand le vin est tiré, il faut le boire
16.02.2021
Ansonsten drohen Konsequenzen, wie sich jetzt in einem Gerichtsverfahren vor dem Tribunal Administratif de Paris (Pariser Verwaltungsgericht) zeigte. 2018 haben sich Oxfam, Notre Affaire à Tous, Fondation pour la Nature et...
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