Category Archives: Land use and Environment
‘Zoöp: Consideration for All Forms of Life within an Organization’
Companies are among the biggest polluters worldwide. Since 2016, just 57 corporate and state producing entities have been responsible for 80% of global CO₂ emissions. At the same time, we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, in which biodiversity is disappearing at an alarming rate. This context makes it clear that traditional […]
Güneş and Kurtulan-Güner, ‘Different Grounds for Climate Change Liability: Can Tort Lawyers Draw Inspiration from Rights-Based Climate Litigation?’
ABSTRACT Tort law and human rights law represent two distinct legal frameworks that have been deployed in climate change litigation. Historically, early climate cases were predominantly grounded in tort law; however, a more recent and significant trend, referred to by some scholars as the ‘rights turn’, has seen a surge in rights-based claims. Despite the […]
Amudat Bello, ‘Impact of Intellectual Property Rights on Climate Actions in Africa: The Way Forward’
ABSTRACT Considering the growing need to strike a balance between the intellectual property (IP) system and technology transfer, it is critical to examine the main impediment to the optimisation of low-carbon potentials in Africa and how this can be addressed. Against this background, this paper will assess the relationship between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and […]
Huys, Kuzma, Olexiuk, Gupta and Aitken, ‘The Impact of Private Climate Change Litigation and Recent Competition Act Amendments on the Canadian Energy Sector: Regulatory and Legal Developments Shaping the Path Forward’
ABSTRACT This article examines the rise of private climate change litigation in Canada, focusing on efforts to hold corporations accountable for their contributions to climate change and their environmental representations. Canadian courts are increasingly engaging with climate claims, despite ongoing challenges such as a reluctance to interfere with corporate discretion. These cases draw on tort, […]
Adefolake Adeyeye, ‘When the rubber hits the road: corporate law and the net zero objective’
ABSTRACT The Climate Change Act includes a 2050 net zero target. Achieving this goal requires collaboration from the government, the private sector, and citizens. This article focuses on the critical role of the private sector and examines how corporate law seeks to facilitate the net zero objective. Despite these intentions, there is a disconnect between […]
Haim Abraham, ‘Private Nuisance, Looking Out, and Gazing In’
ABSTRACT Can looking into a neighboring property through its windows, or conducting one’s affairs in their own property in a manner that is visible to neighbors, constitute private nuisance? In several cases, courts have answered this question affirmatively. In this Chapter, I critique these rulings through two prisms – a rights-based analysis and a queer […]
Ning Li, ‘Civil Law Perspectives on Private Damage Relief in Climate Change Litigation’
ABSTRACT Climate change has emerged as a structural challenge to the global legal system in the 21st century. In recent years, the increasing number of cases where private entities seek damage relief in climate litigation has posed institutional tensions for the traditional civil law system in terms of rights construction, liability attribution, and causal determination. […]
Aissatou Barry, ‘Evicting Evictions’
ABSTRACT Housing courts need a renovation. Referred to more commonly as ‘eviction courts’, they have gone from a forum where tenants and landlords resolve lease and habitability disputes to a graveyard for housing security. In non-payment proceedings, during which landlords seek to recover unpaid rent, the lack of remedies available to low-income tenants makes evictions […]
Kidd and Simmons, ‘Public Choice and Public Trust’
ABSTRACT The public trust doctrine, originally a legal principle designed to protect public access to navigable waters for commerce and navigation, has been expanded far beyond its historical scope. Courts and policymakers now use the doctrine as a broad instrument of environmental intervention, often invoking it to justify sweeping regulatory mandates and restrictions on private […]
Eric Boot, ‘Climate Change and Complicit Lawyers’
ABSTRACT This paper sets out to answer two questions: (1) Are lawyers complicit in their fossil fuel clients’ contributions to climate change and, if so, how blameworthy are they for this complicity?; (2) If lawyers are blameworthily complicit, how is the degree of blameworthiness impacted by their professional role? In order to answer the first […]