Law

The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation together fund more than $40 billon of research annually in the United States and around the globe. These large public expenditures come with strings, including a complex set of laws and guidelines that regulate how scientists may use NIH and NSF funds, how federally funded research may be conducted, and who may have access to or own the product of the research. Until now, researchers have had little instruction on the nature of these laws and how they work. This book provides an introduction to the major ethical and legal considerations pertaining to research under the aegis of federal science funding.

Since 2005, the carbon market has grown to a value of nearly $100 billion per annum. This book examines all the main legal and policy issues which are raised by emissions trading and carbon finance. It covers not only the Kyoto Flexibility Mechanisms but also the regional emission trading scheme in the EU and emerging schemes in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. The Parties to the 1992 UN Framework Convention are in the process of negotiating a successor regime to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol whose first commitment period ends in 2012. As scientists predict that the threat of dangerous climate change requires much more radical mitigation actions, the negotiations aim for a more comprehensive and wide ranging agreement which includes new players — such as the US — as well as taking account of new sources (such as aircraft emissions) and new mechanisms such as the creation of incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

Reasonable people disagree about the reach of the federal government, but there is near-universal consensus that it should protect us from such dangers as bacteria-infested food, harmful drugs, toxic pollution, crumbling bridges, and unsafe toys. And yet, the agencies that shoulder these responsibilities are in shambles; if they continue to decline, lives will be lost and natural resources will be squandered. This book takes a hard look at the tangled web of problems that have led to this dire state of affairs. It turns out that the agencies are not primarily to blame and that regulatory failure actually stems from a host of overlooked causes. The book discovers that unrelenting funding cuts, a breakdown of the legislative process, an increase in the number of political appointees, a concurrent loss of experienced personnel, chaotic White House oversight, and ceaseless political attacks on the bureaucracy all have contributed to the broken system. But while the news is troubling, the book also proposes a host of reforms, including a new model for measuring the success of the agencies and a revitalization of the civil service.

The relationship between individuals and communities — all manner of communities, but especially the state — is a central preoccupation of property theory. Across a broad range of property thought — from utilitarian to Lockean to Hegelian — scholars have expended enormous effort explaining what owners can do with their property and the extent to which the community or the state can participate in those decisions. Discussions of property rights, from whatever perspective, necessarily reflect ideas about the proper domain and limits of individual and community power. Property stands so squarely at the intersection between the individual and community because systems of property are always the creation of some community. Moreover, systems of property have as their subject matter the allocation among community members of rights and duties with respect to resources that human beings need in order to survive and flourish. These allocative decisions are crucially important both to individuals, owners and non-owners alike, and to the community as a whole. In other words, whenever we discuss property, we are unavoidably discussing the architecture of community and of the individual's place within it. Even though the relationship between individuals and community stands at the conceptual center of property theory, the normative theories of community underlying discussions of property are frequently left implicit. This book aims to remedy this deficiency. With essays by property theorists from five different countries, it addresses various facets of the intersection between property and community.

The law of energy and natural resources has always had a strong focus on property as one of its components, but there are relatively few comparative, book-length, treatments of both property law and energy and natural resources law. The aim of this edited collection is to explore the multiple dimensions of the contemporary relationship between property and energy and natural resources law. Its genesis was the growing resurgence of global interest in questions of property in energy and resources and how this manifests itself across legal regimes around the world. With an international and comparative character, the collection seeks to capture differences in the meaning of property, and the different views about the role it should play in a diverse range of contexts: civil law and common law; the law of indigenous communities; public law and private law; and national and international law. Key issues discussed include private rights and common property situations, privatization and regulation, competition for land use and resources, the role of property rights in environmental protection, and the balance between national sovereignty and the security of foreign investment. The collection thus has relevance for a wide readership interested in the legal dimensions of property as an increasingly important aspect of the law for energy and resources across diverse countries, and at the international level. The contributors are established experts in the energy and natural resources law field, and the collection builds upon a body of previous collaborative work in this area.

The last sixty years witnessed an unprecedented expansion of international trade. The system created by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and later by the World Trade Organization (WTO) has proved to be an efficient tool for the elimination of trade tariff barriers. This process also coincided with the increased national risk regulatory controls. Governments, responding to the demands of their domestic constituencies, have adopted a wide range of regulatory measures aimed at protecting the environment and human health. Although for the most part, these new regulatory initiatives served legitimate objectives, it has also turned out that internal measures might become an attractive vehicle for protectionism, taking the place that was traditionally occupied by tariff barriers. The WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) is an attempt by the international community to limit possible abuses while accepting a considerable margin of regulatory discretion of WTO Members. Does it optimally strike a balance between competing objectives of international free trade and regulatory freedom in the field of risk regulation? In answering this question, the book engages in a comprehensive and critical examination of the substantive provisions of the SPS Agreement and the corresponding case law. Special attention is paid to three specific issues: the appropriateness of the disciplines established by the SPS Agreement, the consistency of their interpretation by the WTO case law, and the normative content of those requirements that have not yet been addressed by SPS jurisprudence. The book concludes that despite some failures of the SPS system, the Agreement provides an operable and efficient mechanism for the supervision of domestic SPS measures.

The regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) continues to generate controversy. On the one hand, they are actively promoted by the biotechnology industry as vital to ensuring food security. Yet, on the other hand, consumer resistance persists, not least in the European Union, and such lack of confidence extends not just to GM food itself but also to the regulatory regime, where legal issues are inextricably linked with economics and politics. This book provides a novel contribution to the ongoing debate, recognizing that the legislative environment is complicated by forces as varied as national public opinion and world trade commitments. The book is divided into four parts. The first addresses the influence in this context of civil society, economic imperatives, and differing approaches to risk. The second part is directed to the measures that have been implemented in the European Union, considering multi-level governance, wider aspects of food law, coexistence with conventional and organic crops, and environmental liability. The third part is more overtly comparative in focus, with chapters covering the diverse regimes implemented in Africa, North America, and South America. The book concludes with chapters on world trade and international considerations, including analysis of the EC — Biotech case.

This book provides a different perspective on the real causes of the ills plaguing the world's resources and environment. It re-examines the very nature of nature, and from this new perspective, argues that what is needed is for humans to grant to natural resources a legal right to be left alone—a right of nonuse. In the process, it explores the following questions: Why do natural resources continue to be depleted and removed at an alarming rate? Why are species becoming extinct at a pace that may be unprecedented? Why does the environment continue to be polluted? Why do the weather and climate seem to be changing? Perhaps most important, why have laws, legal institutions and governments been unable to address and correct these problems? This book reviews the history of our relationship with the natural environment and develops new ways of thinking about nature and its protection. Instead of proceeding with human-based goals, the book argues that we should protect environmental resources for their own intrinsic value. Instead of giving humans more and more rights to clean up the environment, and to halt resources depletion, a right of nonuse held by the resource itself should be created. Natural resources have always possessed this parallel nonuse function, and society should recognize and legitimize it.

The United States and Canada are salt water neighbors on the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans. Despite the general closeness of the political, economic, and social relationship, the two States have approached their offshore areas from different perspectives. Canada has long supported expansion of exclusive national control over its adjacent offshore; whereas the United States has been concerned with the balance between national authority and international navigation rights. Canada has tended to view maritime disputes with the United States as local matters; whereas the United States has tended to see the disputes with Canada in global terms. This book examines both the international ocean law disagreements that exist between the United States and Canada respecting maritime boundaries, fisheries, and navigation rights (e.g., the Northwest Passage), and the numerous cooperative bilateral arrangements that have prevented these disputes from being significant causes of friction between the neighbors.

This book analyses recent developments in international sustainable development law (ISDL), a field emerging at the intersection between international economic, environmental, and social law. Hundreds of new bi-lateral, regional, and global treaties have been negotiated in the areas of trade, environment, and development over the past two decades, yet most of them face profound problems in implementation. At the same time, disputes over human rights, environmental protection, and economic development are increasingly common. This book provides a coherent approach that can address conflicts and overlaps between international economic, environmental, and social law. It surveys the international law related to sustainable development, discussing proposed principles, offering case studies that examine innovative aspects of key international instruments, and reflecting on future legal research agendas. Part I surveys the origins of the concept of sustainable development, identifying and discussing the foundations of its legal aspects. It also analyses the main results of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. Part II examines the emerging principles of international law related to sustainable development, based on the International Law Association's New Delhi Declaration. Part III provides case studies of legal instruments and regimes that integrate economic, social, and environmental aspects, illustrating the challenges and innovative methodologies of recent years. Part IV proposes cutting-edge research agendas in six priority areas of intersection between international social, economic, and environmental law, and examines the new international architecture of sustainable development governance in light of the outcomes of the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development.