International Environmental Law

When the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered its Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change on 23 July 2025, commentators rightly called it a watershed for international environmental law. The Court unanimously confirmed that the customary rules of State responsibility, as reflected in many respects in the ILC’s Articles on State Responsibility…

The TotalEnergies climate case, whose merits were partially decided by the Paris Judicial Court in June, illustrates how associations may be the gateway through which rights-based climate cases survive. In that case, local governments and NGOs originally brought claims together against the French oil giant. They argued that TotalEnergies’ statutorily-required due diligence plan was incomplete because it…

The last fortnight has seen commentators focus primarily on conflict, climate, and immigration. A mini-symposium has ranged over a number of legal questions raised by a potential Russia-Ukraine peace treaty: from  VCLT rules on treaty validity and security guarantees, to free economic zones and the question of the reconstruction of Ukraine through seized assets of the Russian Central…

Introduction The first eighteen months of the second Trump administration have witnessed a sustained assault on scientific infrastructures enabling understanding of anthropogenic climate change. This has taken the form of cuts to national science agencies; freezes and dramatic reductions in grants to universities; and attempts to…