Environmental Risk and the Traditional Sector Approach: Market Efficiency at the Core of Environmental Law

Professor Gillroy provides an in-depth discussion on the evolution of environmental law and the proposition that market efficiency has been, and still is, at its core

A Proposal for \u27Philosophical Method\u27 in Comparative and International Law

A basic challenge of contemporary thought is to better understand the origin, persistence, and future course of international/ comparative law. I suggest that a foundational step is to begin treating the law as a philosophical matter. I propose that comparative and international legal theory require a distinct methodology that is as integrated and systematic as positivism, but which better recognizes the dialectic interdependence of normative and empirical and the metaphysical interdependence of theory and practice. Philosophical Method, as systematized by R.G. Collingwood, promotes the dialectic over the eristic, looks for overlap rather than definitive scientific classification, argues for comprehensive philosophy rather than isolated theory and recognizes a proper logical metaphysics of absolute and relative presuppositions rather than a positive legal practice isolated from its inherent philosophical determinants

Public Order Principles, Philosophical Method and the International Law of Nuclear Weapons (SWP 20)

The goal of philosophical method is the construction of a comprehensive policy argument (CPA) for a public policy or legal issue. In addition to the conventional use of empirical models and their logic of investigation in the study of policy and law, CPA requires that an underlying philosophical logic of concepts be deciphered in terms of the ideas within the issue, their definition, overlap and systematic interdependence. In this working paper, I will employ a logic of concepts from the philosophical system of David Hume to provide a unique and more complete logic of legal investigation for the illumination of the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on the Legality of Nuclear Weapons

Review of \u3ci\u3e Our Limits Transgressed: Environmental Political Thought in America\u3c/i\u3e by Bob Peperman Taylor

In this book Taylor traces the evolution of political thought about the environment from within a dialectic between two traditions: the progressive and the pastoral. These traditions are described as having roots in the philosophies of Gifford Pinchot and Henry David Thoreau, respectively, and while this tracing of ancestry is not new or unique to this book, what Taylor does with this starting point is both creative and interesting. Most books which entertain the analysis of theory applied to the environment concentrate on single dimensions of humanities\u27 ethical or economic impact on nature, without a sense of how that particular analysis fits into the overall complexity of thought that has evolved in environmental political theory. Taylor improves on this practice in two ways

Analysing complicity in risk

When risks generate anger rather than fear, there is at least someone who regards the imposition of those risks as wrongdoing; and it then makes sense to speak of the involvement in producing those risks as complicity. It is particularly relevant to examine the complicity of risk bearers, because this is likely to have a strong influence on how far other actors should go in providing them with protection. This article makes a case for analyzing complicity explicitly, in parallel with normal processes of risk assessment, and proposes a framework for this analysis. It shows how it can be applied in a case study of maritime transportation, and examines the practical and theoretical difficulties of this kind of analysis. The conclusion is that the analysis has to be formative rather than summative, but that it could provide a useful way of exposing differences in the assumptions of different actors about agency and responsibility