Environmental Expropiatory Measures in International Investment Law - The Santa Elena Case (original) (raw)

The Contribution of the International Court of Justice to the Development of International Environmental Law: A Contemporary Assessment

The article provides a detailed and up-to-date assessment of the contribution of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to the development of International Environmental Law (IEL), including the potential in this respect of the cases currently pending before the Court. The author argues that the ICJ's contribution to IEL can be organized in two main waves of cases. The legacy of the first wave, which covered essentially the Corfu Channel and the Nuclear Tests cases, as well as an important obiter dictum made in the Barcelona Traction case, was the confirmation of previous case-law on transboundary damages as well as the introduction of the concept of obligations erga omnes, potentially applicable to some environmental norms. The second wave, constituted mainly by the Nauru and the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros cases, the Advisory Opinion on the Legality of Nuclear Weapons, and a number of separate/dissenting opinions, was important in consolidating the previous achievements and pointing to a number of interconnections between IEL and other subfields of international law such as boundary delimitation and international humanitarian law. In this context, the Pulp Mills and Aerial Herbicides cases, currently pending before the ICJ, could potentially pave the way for a third wave, providing much needed clarifications of issues such as the specific contents of IEL as well as the hierarchy and enforceability of its principles.

Revisiting the Argument for the Establishment of An International Environmental Court

Recent years have witnessed intense debate concerning the need to establish an International Environmental Court (IEC) to address global environmental issues. Proponents and critics of this new court have presented a number of arguments in support of their respective views. This paper joins in the debate and makes an argued case for the establishment of the court. In doing so, the paper re-examines the existing arguments and suggests that in spite of the enormous contributions that the extant international judiciary has made to the development of international environmental law, an International Environmental Court, if established, would not only complete the institutional framework that is required for modern global environmental governance, but would also fill some of the obvious gaps in the existing system.

Considerations regarding the role of the international institutions in the international environmental law protection

Analele Universităţii din Oradea, Fascicula: Protecţia Mediului, 2010

This paper tries to emphasize the importance of the international institutions in the international environmental law protection. In these conditions, we can discuss about an authentic transformation. This transformation takes place both in the case of the actors that intervene in the creation of the judicial norms, and in what regards the application of these norms.Up to present, the international environmental law was not codified, but out of the presented ones, we can state that it is an assembly of norms of international laws that regulates the way the human activities. A decisive role in the emphasis of this new branch of the international law belongs to the intergovernmental organizations that develop an ample activity in the favour of a healthy environment at a global level.