The year 2021 saw extreme weather events outside the range of what experts had thought possible, signs of a growing acknowledgment among scientists of the need to take risk assessment more seriously, and the launch of a new initiative that might finally tell heads of government what they need to know.

Article 102 of the UN Charter requires that every treaty shall be registered with the UN Secretariat, and published by it. Over 75,000 treaties have now been registered. The UN General Assembly has drawn up detailed regulations on registration, which the chapter summarises. It also explains the documents which should be submitted to the UN Treaty Section to register a treaty. Where there is a dispute as to whether an instrument is a treaty, the fact that it has been submitted for registration may be evidence of the intention of the states concerned as to its status. But registration is not of itself conclusive of its status. The UN publishes treaties which have been registered in the UN Treaty Series. Each state will also usually have its own treaty series, in which treaties which it has signed or to which it is a party are published. Examples are the UK Treaty Series (UKTS) and the Treaties and Other International Acts (TIAS) of the United States.

Pope Francis raised the alarm about ecology in his encyclical letter Laudato si’. On care for our common home (24 May 2015). He gathers all the aspects of the ecological crisis, which leads to the concept of ‘integral ecology’, in which the different sides of ecology are bound with human life, and in particular with the plight of the poor. The chapter explores this document and discusses its implications for the rights of and representation of nature. After an analysis of the situation and an evaluation of the ecological needs, the Pope adds paths of action and ways of contemplation. He stresses the fact that everybody is able to do something and to discover the joy in a new relationship of contemplation with his brothers and sisters, with the cosmos and with God. The encyclical is completed by the analysis of the Final Document of the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region, held in Rome in October 2019. The Document proposes a concrete application of the encyclical Laudato si’ in the world of today.

Roman law is often considered as an intellectual matrix of contemporary laws and in particular French civil law. However, even if the vocabulary persisted, some legal concepts went through great changes across history as law was step by step related to a subject’s power. The notion of ‘thing’ originally meant the trial, the case, the litigious situation managed by the legal process. In this way, the thing was understood as a res iuris. In contemporary law systems, the thing (res as a legal category) ordinarily specifies some goods on which the subject applies his property power. This view is understandable considering the evolution due to the theorisation of subjective law which led to the promotion of a strong and exclusive separation between persons and things, while Roman law could imbricate these legal categories. This difficulty is at the heart of the problem when jurists aim to categorise Nature in legal taxonomy.

The second part concludes with a chapter on effective advocacy before the ICJ, by Samuel Wordsworth QC and Kate Parlett. It examines both written and oral advocacy before the Court, with the fundamental objective of the advocate in all cases being to persuade, making it essential to consider what will be of most utility to the judges when they come to reach a decision on the case. They also emphasise the significant role the advocate has to play in the pre-litigation stage and in early procedural exchanges: she or he must bear in mind that they have a dual function of presenting the best case for the client to the Court, while also persuading the client as to the most effective way in which to do that.

In science, to be ‘conservative’ is to understate your findings. In insurance, it means the opposite: erring on the side of overstatement of risks. For a clear assessment of the risks of climate change, we need these two cultures to meet in the middle. This requires a separation of tasks: between those who gather information, and those who assess risk.

We are at war with life. The Earth ecosystem, our common home, is being destroyed by industrial technologies which have led to massive pollution of all ecosystems, greenhouse effect, deforestation, impoverishment of the soil, overexploitation of fresh water, acidification of the ocean. We are now engaged in a sixth mass extinction. It is time to recognise the ongoing ecocide, the destruction of our common home, as a crime. It is also time to relearn to live in harmony with Nature, to recognise its intrinsic value and its right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, in all its life forms. The Rights of Nature allow us to protect the rights of future generations, human and non-human. This chapter presents various new initiatives and legal cases from around the world to that end.

Economics is not just about the allocation of scarce resources – how to ‘divide up the pie’. It is also about the creation of novelty, and the formation of new structures – how to make a pie in the first place. The new science of complexity, allied to old ideas of political economy, can help us understand how to create and change things quickly and at large scale. New economic thinking of this kind predicted the global financial crisis, but has barely begun to be applied to policy. It could transform the way we respond to climate change.

Treaties may be amended by agreement between the parties. Bilateral treaties can be amended more easily than multilateral treaties. Bilateral treaties will sometimes include a provision on amendment but, in the absence of that, the parties will often simply proceed to amend the treaty by means of an exchange of notes, with provision concerning the entry into force of the amendment. Multilateral treaties too will often have express provision specifying amendment procedures. The chapter analyses various examples of these, including the use of supplementary treaties or protocols. If there is no such provision, residual rules are provided by Articles 40 and 41 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

This chapter assesses the contribution of the ICJ to the law of international organisations. It emphasises the limited role of the Court in this field, setting out the multiple reasons for this: parts of the law were developed before the Court commenced its work; and the Court has only had intermittent opportunities to consider it through its cases. The author argues that the Court’s approach reflects a more general ambivalence of classic international law when it comes to international institutions: that it emphasises the centrality of States in the international legal system, notwithstanding the steps that have been taken by States to institutionalise significant areas of international law.

The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties remains the yardstick for the interpretation of treaties. International tribunals generally base their decisions on Convention rules, although, as different areas of law with their own dispute settlement systems have developed, there are also particular approaches. The Convention rules are contained in Articles 31--33, and the chapter focuses on these. Each element of the general rule of interpretation in Article 31 and the supplementary means of interpretation in Article 32 is analysed, including the role of subsequent agreement or subsequent practice. Further sections summarise other supplementary means of interpretation and look at treaties in more than one language.

This chapter examines the law of treaties in the jurisprudence of the ICJ. The author highlights the Court’s position on key selected issues of interpretation: specifically the language of the treaty; time and treaty interpretation; and the role of policy. The chapter also considers issues of systemic integration, hierarchy and concurrence of rules.

Dying Abroad starts from the premise that death and its attendant rituals prove an important window into the socioeconomic and political orders and hierarchies that structure human life in the twenty-first century. It argues that states, families, and religious communities all have a vested interest in the fate of dead bodies – including where and how they are disposed of and commemorated – and demonstrates that end-of-life decisions and practices are connected to larger political struggles over the boundaries of nation-states and the place of minoritized groups within them. At a time when a growing chorus of politicians lambast the failures of multiculturalism and call for the fortification of territorial borders, this book elucidates how posthumous practices anchor minority claims for inclusion and challenge hegemonic ideas about the nation.

The chapter provides a thorough analysis of the Court’s jurisdiction to order provisional measures and its procedure. The author identifies an evolution in the Court’s practice on provisional measures, with the Court most recently developing specific conditions for the indication of provisional measures. The author examines those conditions and their elaboration through the Court’s caselaw, together with the Court’s findings as to the binding effect of its provisional measures orders.