Abstract
This chapter identifies and discusses some intra-disciplinary challenges that inform ‘comparative environmental law’ scholarship. The primary argument herein is that major responsibility for the challenges that permeate the field of ‘comparative environmental law’ is upon its parent disciplines of environmental and comparative law. To meet that goal in an orderly fashion, the chapter begins by discussing the ‘intra-disciplinary’ challenges that infuse the two fairly distinct fields of environmental and comparative law. In that light then, the chapter discusses some works associated with ‘comparative environmental law’ to highlight how those intra-disciplinary challenges have made their way into the field of ‘comparative environmental law’. It also briefly highlights the significance of a recent study for the future of CEL scholarship. The chapter ends by noting some general observations concerning the field of CEL and its scholarship.
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Notes
- 1.
JB Ruhl, ‘Climate Change Adaptation and the Structural Transformation of Environmental Law’ (2010) 40 Environmental Law 363, 377.
- 2.
Jorge E Viñuales, ‘Comparative Environmental Law: Structuring a Field’, in Emma Lees and Jorge E Viñuales (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Law (Oxford University Press 2019) 5.
- 3.
Max Weber remarked: ‘[A] comparative study [should] not aim at finding ‘analogies’ and ‘parallels’, as is done by those engrossed in the currently fashionable enterprise of constructing general schemes of development. The aim should, rather, be precisely the opposite: to identify and define the individuality of each development, the characteristics which made the one conclude in a manner so different from that of the other. This done, one can then determine the causes which led to these differences’ Cf Pierre Legrand, ‘The Impossibility of “Legal Transplants”’ (1997) 4 Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative law 111.
- 4.
See, generally, Adam Babich, ‘Too Much Science in Environmental Law’ (2003) 28 Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 119.Crawford S Holling, ‘Two Cultures of Ecology’ (1998) 2 Conservation Ecology, available online at < https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol2/iss2/art4/> accessed 10 June 2020. Eric Biber, ‘Which Science? Whose Science? How Scientific Disciplines Can Shape Environmental Law’ [2012] The University of Chicago Law Review 471.
- 5.
For an extensive bibliography of literature concerning ‘environmental law in a comparative perspective’, See Viñuales (n 2) 5–6.
- 6.
Todd S Aagaard, ‘Environmental Law as a Legal Field: An Inquiry in Legal Taxonomy’ (2009) 95 Cornell Law Review 221, 228.
- 7.
In the context of environmental law, See, Ole W Pedersen, ‘Modest Pragmatic Lessons for a Diverse and Incoherent Environmental Law’ (2013) 33 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 103, 104 (‘[E]nvironmental law represents an incoherent and makeshift body of law’). David A Westbrook, ‘Liberal Environmental Jurisprudence’ (1993) 27 University of California Davis Law Review 619, 625–6 (‘Scholars speak of environmental law as a tangled field, of its bewildering variety and numbing complexity and detail’).Daniel A Farber, Eco-Pragmatism: Making Sensible Environmental Decisions in an Uncertain World (University of Chicago Press 1999) 387 (‘[W]ithout having any overall vision of the field, it is unclear how either agencies or courts can produce a halfway coherent approach to environmental law.’). In the context of comparative law, See, William Ewald, ‘Comparative Jurisprudence (I): What Was It like to Try a Rat?’ (1995) 143 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1889 (‘Comparative law… is said by its leading scholars to be superficial and unsystematic, dull, and prone to errors.’).
- 8.
David Harvey, Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (Blackwell Publishers 1996) 117–118.
- 9.
Cf. Esin Örücü, The Enigma of Comparative Law: Variations on a Theme for the Twenty-First Century (Springer 2013) 16.
- 10.
Westbrook (n 7) 621.
- 11.
See, Elizabeth Fisher and others, ‘Maturity and Methodology: Starting a Debate about Environmental Law Scholarship’ (2009) 21 Journal of Environmental Law 213, 219.
- 12.
Roderick Munday, ‘Accounting for an encounter’, in Pierre Legrand and Roderick Munday, Comparative Legal Studies: Traditions and Transitions (Cambridge University Press 2003) 10.
- 13.
Andrew Harding and Esin Örücü, ‘Preface’, in Comparative Law in the 21st Century ((London, Kluwer Law International 2002) xi.
- 14.
Örücü (n 9) 1–2.
- 15.
Walter Joseph Kamba, ‘Comparative Law: A Theoretical Framework’ [1974] International and Comparative Law Quarterly 485.
- 16.
Fisher and others (n 11) 219–20.
- 17.
Mathias Reimann, ‘The Progress and Failure of Comparative Law in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century’ (2002) 50 The American Journal of Comparative Law 671, 686–90.
- 18.
This claim is specifically pointed out in environmental law context by Fisher and others (n 11), 223–5.
- 19.
Mauro Bussani and Ugo Mattei, ‘Diapositives versus movies - the inner dynamics of the law and its comparative account’, in Mauro Bussani and Ugo Mattei (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Law (Cambridge University Press 2012) 5–6.
- 20.
See, Edward L Rubin, ‘Law and and the Methodology of Law’ [1997] Wisconsin Law Review 521.
- 21.
For detailed examination of this claim in the context of environmental law, See, Dave Owen and Caroline Noblet, ‘Interdisciplinary Research and Environmental Law’ (2014) 41 Ecology Law Quarterly 887.Ole W Pedersen, ‘The Limits of Interdisciplinarity and the Practice of Environmental Law Scholarship’ (2014) 26 Journal of Environmental Law 423. In the context of comparative law, See, generally, Esin Örücü and David Nelken, Comparative Law: A Handbook (Bloomsbury Publishing 2007).Geoffrey Samuel, ‘Comparative Law and Its Methodology’, in Dawn Watkins and Mandy Burton (eds), Research Methods in Law (Routledge 2013).
- 22.
See, Pedersen (n 7) & the contributions of James Gordley, Upendra Baxi, H Patrick Glenn, and Michele Graziadei in Legrand and Munday (n 12).
- 23.
See, Fisher and others (n 11), 221–23 & Örücü (n 9) 71.
- 24.
Liz Stanley and Sue Wise, ‘Method, Methodology and Epistemology in Feminist Research Processes’, in Liz Stanley (ed), Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology (Routledge 1990) 26. See also, Jaakko Husa, ‘Methodology of Comparative Law Today: From Paradoxes to Flexibility?’ (2006) 58 Revue Internationale de droit Comparé 1095 (‘Method is an orderly and systematic manner in which research is done and, in accord, methodology is the field that deals with questions concerning methods…’) <https://www.persee.fr/doc/ridc_0035-3337_2006_num_58_4_19483> accessed 3 July 2020.
- 25.
Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, (tr & ed) Edward Shils and Henry Finch (The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois 1949) 32–33.
- 26.
Vernon Valentine Palmer, ‘From Lerotholi to Lando: Some Examples of Comparative Law Methodology’ (2005) 53 The American Journal of Comparative Law 261, 262.
- 27.
Majority of the early twentieth century comparatists considered comparative law as merely as method, See, for eg, HC Gutteridge, Comparative Law: An Introduction to the Comparative Method of Legal Study & Research (Cambridge University Press 1949) ix. (Observing that: ‘Comparative Law is an unfortunate but generally accepted label for comparative method of legal study and research…’).
- 28.
See, generally, Reimann (n 17) 683–4 & Lawrence Rosen, ‘Beyond Compare’, in Legrand and Munday (n 12).
- 29.
Esin Örücü, ‘Methodology of Comparative Law’, in Jan M. Smits (ed), Elgar Encyclopaedia of Comparative Law, (Edward Elgar Publishing, Second Edition 2012) 452.
- 30.
Daniel Bonilla, ‘Environmental Law Scholarship: Systematization, Reform, Explanation and Understanding’, in Oliver Pederson (ed), Perspectives on Environmental Law Scholarship: Essays on Purpose, Shape and Direction (Cambridge University Press 2018) 41.
- 31.
See, Fisher and others (n 11) 226–243.
- 32.
Günter Frankenberg, ‘Constitutions as commodities: notes on a theory of transfer’, in Günter Frankenberg (ed), Order from Transfer: Comparative Constitutional Design and Legal Culture (Edward Elgar Publishing 2013) 1.
- 33.
Peter W Schroth, ‘Comparative Environmental Law: A Progress Report’ (1976) 1 Harvard Environmental Law Review 603.
- 34.
ibid 605.
- 35.
ibid 627–631.
- 36.
A Dan Tarlock and Pedro Tarak, ‘An Overview of Comparative Environmental Law’ (1983) 13 Denver Journal of International Law & Policy 85.
- 37.
ibid 86–87.
- 38.
ibid 87.
- 39.
ibid 91–93.
- 40.
ibid 93–95.
- 41.
ibid 95–108.
- 42.
Nicholas A Robinson, ‘International Trends in Environmental Impact Assessment’ (1991) 19 BC Environmental Affairs Law Review 591.
- 43.
ibid.
- 44.
John C Dernbach, ‘Reflections on Comparative Law, Environmental Law, and Sustainability’ (1998) 3 Widener Law Symposium Journal 279.
- 45.
René JGH Seerden, Michiel A Heldeweg and Kurt R Deketelaere, Public Environmental Law in the European Union and the United States, A Comparative Analysis (Kluwer Law International 2002).
- 46.
Monika Hinteregger, Environmental Liability and Ecological Damage in European Law (Cambridge University Press 2008).
- 47.
See, Ben Boer, ‘The Rise of Environmental Law in the Asian Region’ (1998) 32 University of Richmond Law Review 1503.
- 48.
See, Jona Razzaque, Public Interest Environmental Litigation in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (Kluwer Law International 2004).Helle Tegner Anker and others, ‘The Role of Courts in Environmental Law–a Nordic Comparative Study’ (2009) 1 Nordic Environmental Law Journal 9.
- 49.
See, George William Pring and Catherine Pring, Greening Justice: Creating and Improving Environmental Courts and Tribunals (Access Initiative 2009).
- 50.
See, Schroth (n 33).
- 51.
See, Lars Emmelin, ‘The Stockholm Conferences’, [1972] Ambio 135.
- 52.
See, Robert E Lutz, ‘The Laws of Environmental Management: A Comparative Study’ (1976) 24 Am J Comp L 447.Andrew C Gross and Nancy E Scott, ‘Comparative Environmental Legislation and Action’ (1980) 29 International & Comparative Law Quarterly 619.
- 53.
See, E Burleson, LH Lye, and N Robinson (ed), Comparative Environmental Law and Regulation (West Law 2011–17) vols I–III.
- 54.
Lees and Viñuales (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Law (n 2).
- 55.
Viñuales (n 2) 7.
- 56.
ibid.
- 57.
ibid 24–28.
- 58.
Ann Althouse, ‘Late Night Confessions in the Hart and Wechsler Hotel’ (1994) 47 Vanderbilt Law Review 993, 1001.
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Singh, A.P. (2021). ‘A Call for Order’: Intra-Disciplinary Challenges and ‘Comparative Environmental Law’. In: John, M., Devaiah, V.H., Baruah, P., Tundawala, M., Kumar, N. (eds) The Indian Yearbook of Comparative Law 2019. The Indian Yearbook of Comparative Law. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2175-8_16
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