In this second chapter dealing with the IIAs’ impact on lawmaking, we analyse and categorise other identified instances in which an IIA argument was used in the lawmaking processes. Here, we discuss invocations of IIA arguments in the lawmaking that appeared in a similar shape or form across the studied countries. We also documented cases that, while politically less significant, demonstrate curious intersections between IIAs and national lawmaking. First, we centre on four specific subject-matter areas in which the IIA argument has featured. Those relate to potentially discriminatory regulations, transparency of the public administration, fundamental rights, and expropriation and nationalisation measures. Then, we close with a section highlighting a miscellany of somewhat unexpected uses of the IIA argument. We bring attention to the attempts at influencing IIA obligations through national legislation, ambiguous examples of regulatory chill, and instances of vague and complementary uses of IIA arguments in lawmaking. The chapter presents general conclusions and broader insights on the IIAs’ impact on lawmaking, especially regarding the regulatory chill and positive spill-over theses.

This chapter looks at guardianship of nature in three traditions of the Global South: from Latin American Buen Vivir (Good Living) derived from Native American traditions to Asian Buddhism in gross national happiness (GNH), and African ubuntu (collective) thought. Buen Vivir and Mother Earth as chief principle of the law, in the Ecuadorian constitution and policies, lead to rights of nature and a modest biocentric jurisprudence. Buddhist Happiness functions as chief principle of the law in the Bhutanese Constitution, with as yet no jurisprudence. This includes guardianship of nature as constitutional duty, whereby citizens can seek redress in court if the state neglects this duty. The rights of future generations in the South African Constitution, are part of the ‘people’ concept in Ubuntu, in which ‘mutual aid’ (in the community of life) functions as chief principle of the law. GNH and ubuntu are in between bio and anthropocentric with the potential of giving rights to nature.

The chapter deals with the ICJ and human rights. It argues that, while the Court is not and will never be a specialised human rights court, it has a significant role in the protection and development of human rights. The author explains some structural obstacles and impediments to the engagement of the Court with human rights, and then offers some instances of substantial incorporation of human rights into the fabric of general international law through interpretation and legal concepts encompassing international community interests. The chapter suggests that structural disengagement in the sense of norms allowing only States to litigate before the Court does not impede substantial incorporation which may depend on other factors, including the changing attitudes of the ICJ judges and lawyers before the Court.

The rapid rise and success of environmental law and regulation has come with the price that the content and legitimacy of the underlying concepts and principles of environmental protection and governance have been given insufficient attention and time to evolve. Consequently, environmental law could not ‘expand organically’ in view of the rapidity, urgency and its political content and context. Yet it is the presence or absence of such legal conceptual underpinnings that will condition whether environmental law develops into a fully fledged and permanent body of law, or whether environmental protection is to be merely a factor in a problem-specific context that will be taken into account in a diversity of established substantive contexts. This chapter describes how corpus linguistics and concordances-based methodologies were used to examines specific terms typically associated with the impact of human activities on the environment, and in order to reveal how conceptual meanings have shifted throughout the twentieth century and from one decade to the other since the 1960s.

This chapter examines the institutional context of the Court. It focuses first on the Court’s function as a court, i.e. as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. It then considers the Court’s relations with States, as an international court. Finally, he considers the Court’s institutional grounding as an organ of the United Nations, and examines its relationship with the United Nations. Professor Ginsburg argues that there is a gap between the Court’s formal institutional structures and its actual operation in practice, and emphasises in particular the way in which the Court has taken a central role in the development of international law.

Traditional economics tells us that to meet policy goals, government should only do the minimum needed to fix a ‘market failure’. A new understanding shows that when the goals are innovation and change, a ‘do the maximum’ approach can be more effective. We should stop aiming to achieve ‘decarbonisation at least cost’, and instead aim to move to the clean economy at maximum gain.