Transnational Environmental Law

Table of Contents - April 2012 - Volume 1, Issue 01  

Invited Article

Global Environmental Constitutionalism: Getting There from Here

Douglas A. Kysara1

a1 Yale Law School, New Haven, CT, United States. Email: douglas.kysar@yale.edu.

Abstract

Dominant analytical approaches to environmental law exhibit a similar, problematic form: they treat that which should be outcome determining as, instead, outcome determined. This form is most evident and influential in the welfare economic technique of regulatory cost–benefit analysis, which treats all resources – including the monetary value of human lives – as potential means towards seemingly higher yielding ends. In contrast, an environmental constitutionalism, in which certain needs and interests of present and future generations, the global community, and other forms of life are given foundational legal importance, would help to restore conceptual coherence and normative priority to the subjects of environmental law.

(Online publication March 13 2012)

Keywords

  • Environmental Constitutionalism;
  • Precautionary Principle;
  • Cost–benefit Analysis

Footnotes