Environmental Principles: From Political Slogans to Legal Rules

Nicolas de Sadeleer

Oxford University Press, 2002 - Environmental law - 433 pages

This book traces the evolution of environmental principles from their origins as vague political slogans reflecting fears about environmental hazards to their embodiment in enforceable laws. Since the early 1970s environmental issues have taken on an ever increasing profile. This has been duein part to a fundamental change in the type and scale of risk posed by industry. Issues such as global warming, GM food, and mad cow disease typify the new kinds of risk: potentially catastrophic consequences could ensue yet there is no scientific agreement over their precise causation, duration andother concerns. Environmental law has always responded to risks posed by industrial society but the new generation of risks have required a new set of environmental principles, emerging from a combination of public fears, science, ethics and established legal practice. This book shows how three ofthe most important principles of modern environmental law grew out of this new age of ecological risk: the polluter pays principle, the preventive principle and the precautionary principle. The author examines the legal force of these principles and in the process offers a novel theory of normformation in environmental law by unearthing new grounds of legality.The book will be of interest to all with an interest in environmental law and policy, in the relationship between law and science, and in the ways in which political and ethical values can become embodied in laws.

Contents

• List of Abbreviations: xi
• Tables of Cases: xix
• Tables of Legislation: xxix
• European Community Legal Instruments: xxxvii
• Domestic Statutes and Related Instruments: xliv
• THE POLLUTERPAYS PREVENTION: 11
• THE PRINCIPLE OF PREVENTION: 71
• THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE: 84
• Conclusions: 225
• THEORETICAL PRESENTATION OF MODERN: 233
• Postmodern law: 245
• Environmental law bears the marks of postmodernity: 251
• Concluding observations: 260
• protection: 275
• Directing principles hard cases and the weighing of conflicting: 289
• THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE DIRECTING PRINCIPLES: 305
• The effects of directing principles of environmental law on litigation: 333
• Concluding observations: 339
• Conclusions: 367
• Bibliography: 399
• Index: 421
• 11: 424
• 89: 430

About the author

Nicolas de Sadeleer teaches environmental law at the Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis in Brussels, where he is Director of their Environmental Law Centre, CEDRE. He was awarded a PhD with distinction in 1998 by Saint-Louis for his work on the application of environmental law principles to
positive law. An updated version of the thesis was published in November 1999 in Belgium and Paris (Les principes du pollueur-payeur, de prévention et de précaution, Brussels, Bruylant/ Paris, AUF, 1999, 437 pp.). He is a guest lecturer in Université catholique de Louvain.

He is also a member of the IUCN and sits on the board of Environment Law Network International.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Environmental Principles: From Political Slogans to Legal Rules; Environmental Principles: From Political Slogans to Legal Rules, Nicolas de Sadeleer; Oxford scholarship online
• Author: Nicolas de Sadeleer
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2002
• ISBN: 0199254745, 9780199254743
• Length: 433 pages