Abstract To halt the decline of the natural environment, attention is increasingly directed towards nature restoration. A recent example of this is the EU’s Nature Restoration Law (NRL). This article presents an assessment of the NRL, arguing that the NRL is ambitious but that this ambition comes with a risk of it becoming a performative body of law. To test the NRL’s application in Member States, this article identifies four key ‘interpretive puzzles’: the relative priorities between the different obligations in the NRL; the correct approach to timescales and the concept of natural range; the ‘climate change causation defence’ and the interaction between the definition of restoration measures and pre-emptive measures. The article then articulates the central theme in relation to these four puzzles—the tension in the relationship between the mandated ‘plan-led’ approach, and a potential lack of Member State discretion in the contents of that plan.

Abstract Current scholarly discourse is dominated by stories about the role of strategic litigation as a mechanism for forcing public action in relation to climate change. While such stories are satisfying, they are not necessarily meaningful because they narrow the intellectual field of vision. By using an essay by Ursula Le Guin on narrative forms, I show that other more meaningful narratives are possible to tell. Narratives that encompass a bigger picture and, in so doing, draw attention to how public law is a resource for the institutional and reasoning capacity required for responding to the polycentric and multivalent nature of climate change. Such capacity does not provide a ‘solution’ to climate change but does underscore the need to foster legal and scholarly expertise and imagination in relation to climate change and public law.

Abstract The Levelling-Up and Regeneration Act 2023 has marked major reforms in how planning law legally conceptualises policies, places and practices. These reforms have an impact not only on the scope of planning law but also on the shape of environmental law in England and Wales. In particular, the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Act 2023 changes how different forms of national and local policy legally interact, creates new administrative regulation for protected landscapes and establishes a new framework for environmental impact assessment called the Environmental Outcome Reports. This introduction to the legislation illustrates the importance of understanding the planning law reform for environmental law scholarship more generally.

Abstract Approximately half of all animal species on the planet are parasites. Many of these species play important roles in ecological communities, including maintaining the balance within ecosystems by regulating host populations. Though parasite species are often neglected by ecologists and derided generally, many are threatened with extinction. Against this backdrop, this article examines the extent to which current international biodiversity law offers protection to animal parasites, and whether the protection aligns with scientific findings. Taking a diagnostic approach, this study shows that parasites are overlooked in international biodiversity law, and as such, it reports a major blind spot in conservation measures. Following from this, lines of further enquiry into parasites and (international) biodiversity law are suggested, including examining the interaction between law and (ecological) parasitology, and species bias in international biodiversity law. In addition, theoretical questions that arise when considering the legal protection of parasites in biodiversity law are also considered.

Abstract The UK’s Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 introduced into statute certain remedies for use where unlawfulness had been found on the part of a public authority or decision-maker carrying out public functions. These remedies allow for such unlawfulness to be deemed lawful, including where the courts consider that remedying an unlawful decision would negatively impact third parties or good administration. When this legislation was under consideration in the UK’s Parliament, there was considerable concern from a number of environmental organisations that such remedies would prohibit the obtaining of redress where environmental harm had occurred. This analysis examines the nature of the new remedies introduced by the Act, how domestic courts may use them, and how those involved in environmental or climate litigation against public authorities might adapt their approach in light of these new statutory powers.

A deep dive into a world esoteric for most of us, its denizens, the harms they are now facing and the ethics and laws of ocean governance, Blue Legalities brings together multidisciplinary contributions exploring the changing nature of water ecosystems and our evolving rapport to them. Core scientific debates are covered in the book: ocean warming and acidification, sea level rise, pollution, extraction, species extinction, robotics, as well as ethical and legal debates, such as novel interpretations of territoriality, temporality, sovereignty, jurisdiction, harms and crimes, rights holders and duty bearers. Like the ebb and flow of the sea, we witness the flux of academic, civic, political discourse, and of jurisprudence. Drawing on the ‘blue turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, the book contributes to critical ocean studies1, a field seeking to transcend the anthropocentric, (neo)colonial, masculine, militaristic lenses typically used to understand the depths and their impact on terrestrial life. Blue Legalities was followed in 2022 by a similar collection, in which Irus Braverman brings together multidisciplinary contributions challenging the Eurocentric, terracentric and anthropocentric nature of international (environmental) law.2

Abstract EU environmental law increasingly adopts an impact-based regulatory strategy that places biophysical sciences in a significant role not only in designing regulation but also in interpreting and implementing the law. While crucial for the effectiveness of environmental law, such a regulatory strategy creates challenges for the legitimacy of EU environmental law. This article traces the shift from a behaviour-based to impact-based regulation in this context and analyses the latter in light of Lon L. Fuller’s eight classic criteria for the rule of law to expose the legitimacy challenges. Focusing on the EU Water Framework Directive and the Land-use Change and Forestry Regulation, this study shows that EU environmental law suffers from serious shortcomings in securing legal legitimacy and concludes by highlighting how this may be improved going forward.

Abstract This article examines three constitutional environmental provisions and how they have been applied by courts in Europe in three climate cases from Norway, Germany and France. In each of these cases, directive principles, that is, constitutionally entrenched state obligations to protect social values, generally by enacting legislation, played a key role in judicial decisions regarding climate change mitigation. We engage with Lael K. Weis’s analytical framework on directive principles to clarify the allocation of institutional responsibility for climate change mitigation as applied in these three cases, and argue that clarifying these roles alleviates some of the criticism regarding the democratic legitimacy of judicial decision making on climate change. Importantly, while courts do not directly enforce these types of constitutional directive principles, they must adjudicate them. When courts interpret constitutionally mandated legislation in light of directive principles, they develop new constitutional environmental norms. While most scholarly analysis of environmental constitutionalism has focused on environmental rights, our examination confirms Weis’s thesis that directive principles aimed at legislatures are also important forms of environmental constitutionalism, and deserving of further attention.

Abstract Dutch courts in Urgenda ordered the government of the Netherlands to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020, compared with 1990. The case has been presented as a remarkable judicial victory of climate action advocates. With hindsight, this article questions the case’s contribution to the mitigation of climate change. If the Urgenda target has been met, this had little to do with the few measures that the government took too late and too hurriedly to achieve genuine mitigation outcomes. Rather, these measures likely caused a slight increase in global long-term emissions. And while the case has raised awareness, there is no reason to assume that it has translated into momentum for climate action more than it has hindered new policy developments. This case study sheds light on practical limitations of court-imposed climate targets that may justify the greater restraint that other courts have exercised in comparable cases.

Abstract The interpretation of planning policy is important in English planning law both in theory and in practice but, nevertheless, it is under-examined in the literature. This article focuses on the question of the appropriate role of the court in relation to planning policy. Judges have an important role in promoting a consistent approach to policy, such that the guiding function of policy is enhanced. However, the distinction which is drawn between the interpretation and application of policy is too simplistic, as is a binary distinction between ‘broad’ and ‘specific’ planning policies. A better approach is to recognise that there are four types of questions which arise in the interpretation of policy, which this article sets out to explain.