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Application of World Law by International Courts and Tribunals to Protect the Environment

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The Environment Through the Lens of International Courts and Tribunals

Abstract

If States fail to conclude the necessary international legal agreements specifically designed to protect our common environment, then how far can (judges of) international courts and tribunals go in deriving the necessary obligations to protect our common environment from already existing norms and (general) principles of international law? To answer that question, this chapter draws inspiration from the so-called world law tradition, as it was developed in the United Kingdom and the United States (world law) , the Netherlands (wereldrecht) , and Japan (sekai-hō). This tradition calls upon (judges of) international courts and tribunals to use their authority and influence to claim a degree of independence from the will of States when identifying, interpreting and applying fundamental norms and principles of international law, based on global values, accepted and recognized by the international community as a whole as of fundamental importance, the observance of which is regarded as a shared legal interest of that international community. It is not disputed that a healthy environment is such a shared legal interest.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the world law literature, the preferred name for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is ‘World Court’. This chapter follows that approach.

  2. 2.

    Hagiwara 2019.

  3. 3.

    United Kingdom (UK), House of Commons Debate, 23 November 1945, Vol 416, Columns 759-846. These records can be consulted online at https://hansard.parliament.uk/.

  4. 4.

    Usborne, an active contributor to the British World Federalist Movement, is an example. See UK, House of Commons Debate, 28 July 1950, Vol. 478, Columns 913-44.

  5. 5.

    UK, House of Lords Debate, 7 May 1953, Vol 182, Columns 348-85.

  6. 6.

    Clark and Sohn 1958.

  7. 7.

    Johnstone 2020.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., p. 91, pp. 95–106.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., p. 100.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., pp. 337–338.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., p. 337.

  12. 12.

    The term wereldrecht first appeared much earlier, in the late 19th century. See ‘Beginselen van een Algemeen Wereldrecht’, Vlaardingsche Courant, 19 September 1877.

  13. 13.

    Gerards and Schrijver 2010. See also Schrijver 2011. The latter book was used as textbook for an elective course on wereldrecht, which was offered at Leiden University School of Law, and taught by Nico Schrijver and myself.

  14. 14.

    Spijkers 2010.

  15. 15.

    Spijkers 2011, Chapter 2.

  16. 16.

    Spijkers 2011.

  17. 17.

    United Nations, Charter of the United Nations, 24 October 1945, 1 UNTS XVI, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3930.html Accessed 25 April 2021.

  18. 18.

    These principles were first proclaimed in an agreement between India and the People’s Republic of China of 29 April 1954, United Nations, Treaty Series, Vol 299, pp. 57–82. They have since been embraced by the great majority of States in this world.

  19. 19.

    Statute of the International Court of Justice, 26 June 1945, entry into force 24 October 1945 (ICJ Statute).

  20. 20.

    Bos 2012, p. 154 (translated from the Dutch original by myself).

  21. 21.

    Tanaka 1932–1934.

  22. 22.

    Yokota 1974; Doak 2017, pp. 4–12.

  23. 23.

    Takeshita 2013, pp. 229–230; Doak 2019, pp. 41–62.

  24. 24.

    Tanaka 1938.

  25. 25.

    Tanaka 1954, with contributions from, among others, Hans Kelsen.

  26. 26.

    Tanaka 1938, p. 315 (translated from the French original by myself).

  27. 27.

    Doak 2019, pp. 101–105.

  28. 28.

    ICJ, South West Africa (Ethiopia and Liberia v South Africa), Judgement, Dissenting opinion of Judge Tanaka, 18 July 1966, ICJ Reports 1966, p. 296.

  29. 29.

    Article 38 ICJ Statute reads, above n 20, where relevant that ‘[t]he [World] Court, whose function is to decide in accordance with international law such disputes as are submitted to it, shall apply [..] (a) international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting states; (b) international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law; [and] (c) the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations’.

  30. 30.

    ICJ, South West Africa, above n 29, p. 298.

  31. 31.

    ICJ, North Sea Continental Shelf (Federal Republic of Germany/Denmark/Netherlands), Judgment, Dissenting opinion of Judge Tanaka, 20 February 1969, ICJ Reports 1969, p. 178.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., p. 196.

  33. 33.

    Tanaka 1971, p. 19. Note that his view on the link between custom and State consent is not entirely consistent with his dissenting opinion of 1969.

  34. 34.

    For the most important such declarations, see Sect. 22.4, below.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 20.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., p. 21.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., p. 22.

  38. 38.

    Oguri 2020. This paper is in Japanese, but Hirofumi Oguri kindly provided me with an English summary.

  39. 39.

    Saito 1984.

  40. 40.

    Kotzé 2016, p. 252. The quote includes a reference to Article 53—on treaties conflicting with a peremptory norm of general international law (jus cogens)—and Article 64—on the emergence of a new peremptory norm of general international law (jus cogens) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, concluded in Vienna on 23 May 1969, entry into force on 27 January 1980, in United Nations, Treaty Series, Vol 1155, p. 331.

  41. 41.

    ICJ, Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Project (Hungary v Slovakia), Judgement, 25 September 1997, ICJ Reports 1997, para 112.

  42. 42.

    More on this case in Sect. 22.4, below.

  43. 43.

    Saito 1984, p. 246.

  44. 44.

    Swart 2006.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., p. 283.

  46. 46.

    The term non liquet literally means ‘it is not clear’. It refers to the situation in which a court cannot decide a case because there is no applicable international law to use as foundation for a decision. Bodansky 2006.

  47. 47.

    Swart 2006, pp. 283–293.

  48. 48.

    United States (US), Congressional Records Senate, 16 September 1961, p. 1989.

  49. 49.

    Acheson 1961.

  50. 50.

    For a very early example, see Bruncken 1925, in which the same argument is made.

  51. 51.

    Letter from the Netherlands Minister of Foreign Affairs to the President of the Netherlands House of Representatives of the States-general, 18 September 2020, parliamentary document 32 735, No. 301, available at www.tweedekamer.nl.

  52. 52.

    ITLOS, Dispute Concerning Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary Between Mauritius and Maldives in the Indian Ocean (Mauritius/Maldives), Case No. 28.

  53. 53.

    ITLOS, The M/T ‘San Padre Pio’ (No. 2) Case (Switzerland/Nigeria), Case No. 29.

  54. 54.

    ECHR, Ukraine v. Russian Federation, 13 March 2014, App No 8019/16; ECHR, Georgia v. Russian Federation (IV), 22 August 2018 App. No 39611/18.

  55. 55.

    ECHR, The Netherlands v. Russian Federation, Application 28525/20, 10 July 2020.

  56. 56.

    ECHR, Armenia v. Azerbaïdjan, 28 September 2020, App. No 42521/20.

  57. 57.

    At the time of writing, the application was not yet available on the Court’s website. It can be found here: https://youth4climatejustice.org/the-case/.

  58. 58.

    Stephens 2018; Fitzmaurice 2013; Viñuales 2008.

  59. 59.

    Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, adopted 16 June 1972, published in the Report of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm, between 5 and 16 June 1972, UNDoc. A/CONF.48/14/Rev.1.

  60. 60.

    Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, General Assembly resolution 3281(XXIX), adopted 12 December 1974.

  61. 61.

    World Charter for Nature, annexed to General Assembly resolution 37/7, adopted 28 October 1982.

  62. 62.

    Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, published in the Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, between 3 and 14 June 1992, UNDoc. A/CONF.151/26/Rev.l (Vol. l).

  63. 63.

    Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development, published in the Report of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg (South Africa), between 26 August and 4 September 2002, UNDoc. A/CONF.199/20.

  64. 64.

    Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, General Assembly resolution 70/1, adopted 25 September 2015.

  65. 65.

    Note that not all parties are States.

  66. 66.

    de Hoogh 1996, p. 63.

  67. 67.

    ICJ, Legality of the Threat of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion, 8 July 1996, ICJ Reports 1996, para 29.

  68. 68.

    ICJ, Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Project, above n 42, para 53.

  69. 69.

    Article 33, Draft Articles on State Responsibility, with commentaries thereto, adopted by the International Law Commission at its thirty second session, published in the Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1980, Vol II, Part Two, p. 39.

  70. 70.

    Article 25, Articles on State Responsibility, with commentaries thereto, adopted by the International Law Commission at its fifty-third session, published in the Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 2001, Vol II, Part Two, p. 83.

  71. 71.

    Ibid., p. 118.

  72. 72.

    Anghie and Weeramantry 1998; Anghie 2001.

  73. 73.

    Article 57, ICJ Statute, above n 20.

  74. 74.

    Rules of Court, adopted on 14 April 1978, entry into force 1 July 1978, last amended 14 April 2005.

  75. 75.

    Article 30, Statute of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Annex VI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 10 December 1982, 1833 UNTS 3, entered into force 16 November 1994.

  76. 76.

    Article 125, Rules of the Tribunal (ITLOS/8), adopted on 28 October 1997 and last amended on 25 September 2018. See also Article 135.

  77. 77.

    Sarmiento Lamus 2020.

  78. 78.

    For the practice of writing separate and dissenting opinions at regional human rights courts, see White and Boussiakou 2009, and Resende 2019.

  79. 79.

    ICJ, Certain Activities Carried Out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua), Compensation, 2 February 2018, ICJ Reports 2018, paras 41–43.

  80. 80.

    Ibid., separate opinion of Judge Cançado Trindade.

  81. 81.

    The most important example in the context of environmental protection is the separate opinion of Judge Cançado Trindade to ICJ, Whaling in the Antarctic (Australia v Japan: New Zealand intervening), Judgment, 31 March 2014, ICJ Reports 2014, p. 226.

  82. 82.

    Spijkers 2018.

  83. 83.

    Cullet 2020.

  84. 84.

    Spijkers 2021.

  85. 85.

    Spijkers 2019.

  86. 86.

    On 9 March 2020, a roundtable discussion of the Standing Committee for Interior Affairs of the Netherlands House of Representatives took place on the topic of Dikastocracy. The position papers are available at www.tweedekamer.nl/.

  87. 87.

    Alter 2020.

  88. 88.

    Oxman examined the impact of separate opinions of ITLOS judges but did not draw any definite conclusions from his analysis. He did warn that ‘the greater the number of [separate] opinions, the more difficult it may be [for the international tribunal] to maximize the impact of a decision either on the behavior of the parties or on the development of the law, or indeed even to assess that impact’. Oxman 2013, p. 51.

  89. 89.

    A notable exception might be Judge Cançado Trindade of the World Court, to whom we have referred already. His habit of attaching lengthy separate opinions to almost every judgment has made him a somewhat controversial figure. See Milanovic 2012.

  90. 90.

    Hernández et al. 2020.

  91. 91.

    See Sect. 22.3, above.

  92. 92.

    Council of Europe 2012, le Moli 2020, and Tigre 2020.

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  1. China Institute of Boundary and Ocean Studies (CIBOS), Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Otto Spijkers

  2. Research Institute of Environmental Law (RIEL), Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Otto Spijkers

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  1. ESILA, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Edgardo Sobenes

  2. Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Sarah Mead

  3. Université Paris Nanterre, Angers, France

    Benjamin Samson

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Spijkers, O. (2022). Application of World Law by International Courts and Tribunals to Protect the Environment. In: Sobenes, E., Mead, S., Samson, B. (eds) The Environment Through the Lens of International Courts and Tribunals. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-507-2_22

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