Law, Environment and Social Justice (PLAH067) – 15 credits
a) Description
This course is an introductory module to environmental law that aims at giving students a solid and comprehensive foundation of key concepts of environmental law and a grounding in some of the most topical and foundational debates. These include the role of justice frameworks in relation to environmental law, as well as key debates in environmental legal regulation. The aim is to provide a platform from which to better appreciate some of the central tensions and dynamics in the study of environmental law generally. The course will introduce environmental law in its North-South context, in historical perspective, in a domestic, comparative and regional context. It will cover the context for environmental regulation, principles and regulatory techniques from a theoretical and practical perspective.
Objectives
The course seeks to:
- equip students with a broad understanding of the law concerning the environment;
- provide students with knowledge of basic concepts and principles underlying the conservation and use of the environment;
- equip students with analytical tools with which they may understand environmental law in its broader context, including political, economic, social and ecological dimensions.
b) Indicative syllabus (subject to change)
1. Introduction: Foundations and development of environmental law
2. Framing Environmental Law in a South-North Context: Poverty and Development
3. Whose Environmental Law? From Colonial Influences to International and Transnational Environmental Law
4. Constitutional law and fundamental rights
5. Environmental justice and equity
6. Principles of environmental law: prevention, precaution & polluter pays
7. Framing environmental protection: scientific bases and economic approaches
8. Evolving approaches to environmental law: Rights of nature
9. Regulation of environmental protection (command & control/standards) and planning
10. Enforcement of environmental law: Environmental courts, alternative dispute resolution and public interest litigation
c) Assessment (subject to change)
Assessment comprises two different elements:
Book review: 1,000 words (30 % of the mark)
Essay: 2,500 words (70% of the mark)
d) General Reference Books Related to the Course
Rhuks Temitope Ako, Environmental Justice in Developing Countries – Perspectives from Africa and Asia-Pacific (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013).
Domenico Amirante and Silvia Bagni (eds), Environmental Constitutionalism in the Anthropocene. Values, Principles and Actions (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022).
Brita Bohman, Legal Design for Social-Ecological Resilience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Philippe Cullet & Sujith Koonan eds, Research Handbook on Law, Environment and the Global South (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019).
Elizabeth Fisher, Bettina Lange, and Eloise Scotford, Environmental Law: Text, Cases & Materials (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed, 2019).
Anna Grear & Louis J. Kotzé eds, Research Handbook on Human Rights and the Environment (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2015).
Keith H. Hirokawa ed, Environmental Law and Contrasting Ideas of Nature – A Constructivist Approach (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Emma Lees & Jorge E. Viñuales eds, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
Ugo Mattei & Fritjof Capra, The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015).
Giulia Sajeva, When Rights Embrace Responsibilities – Biocultural Rights and the Conservation of Environment (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019).
Eloise Scotford, Environmental Principles and the Evolution of Environmental Law (Oxford: Hart, 2017).
Christina Voigt ed., Rule of Law for Nature – New Dimensions and Ideas in Environmental Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Burns H. Weston & David Bollier, Green Governance - Ecological Survival, Human Rights, and the Law of the Commons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).