Transboundary Harm In International Law

This book reveals the many harms which flow across the ever-more porous sovereign borders of a globalising world. These harms expose weaknesses in the international legal regime built on sovereignty of nation states. Using the Trail Smelter Arbitration, one of the most cited cases in international environmental law, this book explores the changing nature of state responses to transboundary harm. Taking a critical approach, the book examines the arbitration's influence on international law generally, and international environmental law specifically. In particular, the book explores whether there are lessons from Trail Smelter that are useful for resolving transboundary challenges confronting the international community. The book collects the commentary of a distinguished set of international law scholars who consider the history of the Trail Smelter arbitration, its significance for international environmental law, its broader relationship to international law, and its resonance in fields beyond the environment.

The Russian media are widely seen to be increasingly controlled by the government. Leaders buy up opposing television channels and pour money in as fast as it hemorrhages out. As a result, TV news has become narrower in scope and in the range of viewpoints which it reflects: leaders demand assimilation and shut down dissenting stations. Using original and extensive focus group research and new developments in cognitive theory, Ellen Mickiewicz unveils a profound mismatch between the complacent assumption of Russian leaders that the country will absorb their messages, and the viewers on the other side of the screen. This is the first book to reveal what the Russian audience really thinks of its news and the mental strategies they use to process it. The focus on ordinary people, rather than elites, makes a strong contribution to the study of post-communist societies and the individual's relationship to the media.

This book reviews the practice of shared responsibility in multiple issue areas of international law, to assess its application and development.

The Chernobyl disaster, the Amoco Cadiz oil spill and the Colorado River dispute are examples of an activity conducted by one state which has serious adverse effects in the territory of another, or in global common areas. This book details the international rules and compensation procedures and is intended for use by governmental officials, international lawyers and jurists. It discusses existing laws on international liability and considers the underlying legal issues that require further development. It is one of the few books on the subject written from the perspective of a developing country with rapid economic and social development.

This book focuses on how public and private international law address civil liability for transboundary pollution. In public international law, civil liability treaties promote the implementation of minimum procedural standards in domestic tort law. This approach implicitly relies on private international law to facilitate civil litigation against transboundary polluters. Yet this connection remains poorly understood. Filling the gap, this book engages in a meaningful dialogue between the two areas and explores how domestic private international law can reflect the policies developed in international environmental law. It begins with an investigation of civil liability in international environmental law. It then identifies preferable rules of civil jurisdiction, foreign judgments and choice of law for environmental damage, using Canadian private international law as a case study and making extensive references to European law. Liability for transboundary pollution is a contentious issue of the law, both in scholarship and practice: international lawyers both private and public as well as environmental lawyers will welcome this important work.

The interplay between procedure and substance has not been a major point of contention for international environmental lawyers. Arguably, the topic’s low profile is due to the mostly uncontroversial nature of the field’s distinction between procedural and substantive obligations. Furthermore, the vast majority of environmental law scholars and practitioners have tended to welcome the procedural features of multilateral environmental agreements and their potential to promote regime evolution and effectiveness. However, recent developments have served to put the spotlight on certain aspects of the procedure substance topic. ICJ judgments revealed ambiguity on aspects of the customary law framework on transboundary harm prevention that the field had thought largely settled. In turn, in the treaty context, the Paris Agreement’s retreat from binding emissions targets and its decisive turn towards procedure reignited concerns in some quarters over the “proceduralization” of international environmental law. The two developments invite a closer look at the respective roles of, and the relationship between, procedure and substance in this field and, more specifically, in the context of harm prevention under customary and treaty law.

Due Diligence in International Law is the first ever international law monograph on the missing link between state responsibility and international liability that is the international law principle of due diligence, ensuring international cooperation, cybersecurity and preventing significant transboundary harm.

The book provides a systematic and comprehensive study of the prevention principle in international environmental law.