Climate Change Meets the Law of the Horse

The climate change policy debate has only recently turned its full attention to adaptation - how to address the impacts of climate change we have already begun to experience and that will likely increase over time. Legal scholars have in turn begun to explore how the many different fields of law will and should respond. During this nascent period, one overarching question has gone unexamined: how will the legal system as a whole organize around climate change adaptation? Will a new distinct field of climate change adaptation law and policy emerge, or will legal institutions simply work away at the problem through unrelated, duly self-contained fields, as in the famous Law of the Horse? This Article is the first to examine that question comprehensively, to move beyond thinking about the law and climate change adaptation to consider the law of climate change adaptation. Part I of the Article lays out our methodological premises and approach. Using a model we call Stationarity Assessment, Part I explores how legal fields are structured and sustained based on assumptions about the variability of natural, social, and economic conditions, and how disruptions to that regime of variability can lead to the emergence of new fields of law and policy. Case studies of environmental law and environmental justice demonstrate the model’s predictive power for the formation of new distinct legal regimes. Part II applies the Stationarity Assessment model to the topic of climate change adaptation, using a case study of a hypothetical coastal region and the potential for climate change impacts to disrupt relevant legal doctrines and institutions. We find that most fields of law appear capable of adapting effectively to climate change. In other words, without some active intervention, we expect the law and policy of climate change adaptation to follow the path of the Law of the Horse - a collection of fields independently adapting to climate change - rather than organically coalescing into a new distinct field. Part III explores why, notwithstanding this conclusion, it may still be desirable to seek a different trajectory. Focusing on the likelihood of systemic adaptation decisions with perverse, harmful results, we identify the potential benefits offered by intervening to shape a new and distinct field of climate change adaptation law and policy. Part IV then identifies the contours of such a field, exploring the distinct purposes of reducing vulnerability, ensuring resiliency, and safeguarding equity. These features provide the normative policy components for a law of climate change adaptation that would be more than just a Law of the Horse. This new field would not replace or supplant any existing field, however, as environmental law did with regard to nuisance law, and it would not be dominated by substantive doctrine. Rather, like the field of environmental justice, this new legal regime would serve as a holistic overlay across other fields to ensure more efficient, effective, and just climate change adaptation solutions

Expanding the Boundaries of Boundary Dispute Settlement: International Law and Critical Geography at the Crossroads

This Article identifies a new trend in the adjudication of international boundary disputes and examines it from a historical and normative perspective. For many years, the resolution of international land boundary disputes was governed exclusively by the principle of the stability and continuity of boundaries. Under this paradigm, the main role of international adjudicators was to determine the exact location of historical boundary lines that had been set forth in colonial-era treaties or decrees. Once these lines were ascertained, they were strictly enforced, and any attempt to challenge them was dismissed. In recent years, however, international adjudicators have been increasingly inclined to deviate from historical boundaries in order to promote human-oriented goals such as the protection of borderland populations or the bolstering of peace efforts. After demonstrating this development in several cases, the Article evaluates its normative implications. For that purpose, the Article turns to Critical Border Studies (CBS), an emerging field within political geography that critically explores the sources, functions, and effects of borders. CBS sheds light on the power asymmetries that underlie the traditional paradigm and points to the need to adopt a more dynamic and equitable approach to boundary delineation. Drawing on CBS insights, as well as on recent boundary jurisprudence, the Article maps out several types of human-oriented considerations that international adjudicators should take into account when deciding boundary disputes and examines ways to balance them with the principle of the stability of boundaries. Beyond its contribution to the study and development of international boundary law, this Article demonstrates the broader potential of marrying international law with critical geography, which has, so far, mostly been overlooked