Constitutional environmental rights

Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgements......Page 12
1. Background......Page 14
2. Rationale......Page 18
2.1. Why the right to an adequate environment ought to be constitutionalized......Page 78
2.2. The rationale for taking environmental protection to be a human rights issue......Page 22
2.3. Section conclusion......Page 26
3. Overview of the arguments of the book......Page 27
1. The Case for a Human Right to an Adequate Environment......Page 38
1.1.1. The scope of an environmental human right......Page 40
1.1.2. Addressing doubts from an environmental perspective......Page 44
1.2. A genuine human right?......Page 49
1.3.1. Why the right to an adequate environment meets the criteria of a genuine human right......Page 60
1.3.2. Defending the case means critically assessing the relation of rights to duties......Page 63
1.4. International recognition of a human right to an adequate environment: the precedents......Page 67
1.5. Conclusion......Page 71
2. Constitutionalizing the Right to an Adequate Environment: Challenges of Principle......Page 76
2.1.1. Assessing the claim that ‘all human rights ought to be constitutionalized’......Page 79
2.2. Why environmental protection should not be constitutionalized only in the form of a policy statement......Page 85
2.3. Why a substantive right to an adequate environment should not be provided with lesser constitutional status than a fundamental right......Page 91
2.3.1. Why the distinction between fundamental rights and social rights is conceptually problematic......Page 92
2.3.2. Why environmental rights should be substantive and not merely procedural......Page 97
2.4. Conclusion......Page 101
3. The Challenge of Effective Implementation......Page 106
3.1. The necessary conditions for judicial enforcement of constitutional rights, and claims that these cannot be fulfilled for the right to an adequate environment......Page 107
3.2. The peculiar difficulties of enforcing environmental norms......Page 114
3.3. The institutional and constitutional competence of courts......Page 123
3.3.1. Specialist environmental courts......Page 124
3.3.2. The constitutional competence of courts......Page 128
3.4. The jurisprudence of human rights......Page 132
3.5. The effectiveness of a constitutional right to an adequate environment......Page 137
4. Environmental Rights as Democratic Rights......Page 142
4.1.1. Undemocratic transfer of powers from legislature to judiciary......Page 144
4.1.2. Undemocratically binding the future?......Page 146
4.1.3. Rights proposals have an undemocratic motivational structure?......Page 148
4.1.4. Internal tensions in the majoritarian critique of constitutional rights......Page 149
4.1.5. Section conclusion......Page 151
4.2. Democratic rights......Page 152
4.2.1. Democracy’s ‘self-binding’ rights: procedural rights......Page 153
4.2.2. Environmental procedural rights......Page 156
4.3. Substantive environmental rights as democratic rights......Page 158
4.4. Environmental rights as negative rights......Page 162
4.5. The democratic legitimacy of negative environmental rights......Page 166
4.6. Conclusion......Page 171
5. Is a Constitutional Environmental Right Necessary? A European Perspective......Page 172
5.1. Contextualizing the question......Page 173
5.2. Environmental rights in European Community law......Page 178
5.2.1. EC policy principles......Page 179
5.2.2. Directives......Page 183
5.3. Using human rights for environmental protection......Page 186
5.3.1. The environmental potential of existing substantive rights in Europe......Page 187
5.3.2. Procedural environmental rights and the Aarhus Convention......Page 190
5.4. Conclusion......Page 194
6. Environmental Rights and Environmental Justice: A Global Perspective......Page 198
6.1.1. The continuing importance of the nation-state......Page 201
6.1.2. The permeability of domestic and international normative orders......Page 204
6.2. Constitutional environmental rights viewed from the normative perspective of global justice......Page 205
6.3.1. The need for environmental rights is not nullified by imperatives of development......Page 213
6.3.2. Illustrations of permeability in practice......Page 216
6.3.3. Poorer countries in the avant garde of environmental human rights jurisprudence......Page 218
6.4. Conclusion......Page 223
Bibliography......Page 230
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E......Page 243
G......Page 244
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N......Page 246
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W......Page 249