Customary Law as Basis for International Environmental Law?

1/3 Read closely the three following leading precedents which ultimately define the scope of international environmental law obligations outside treaty under traditional customary law:

a. Trail Smelter Arbitration excerpt

b. Lake Lanoux Arbitration excerpt

c. France-Australia Nuclear Test Case excerpt

2/3 Then please read
a. 1972 Declaration of the UN Conference on the Human Environment (commonly known as the Stockholm Declaration), regarded as the foundational document marking the start of modern international environmental law.

b. Handl, “Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm Declaration) 1972, and the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development, 1992 (UN Audiovisual Library of International Law, 2012) (Handl is comparing provenance of the 1972 Stockholm Declaration and the 1992 Rio Declaration produced twenty years later at the Rio conference, in preparation for which Dr. Mahatir delivered the pep talk to developing country representatives read for Unit 1; read things with a view to the process Handl describes, asking yourself whether he is describing either or both of the Rio and the Stockholm Declarations as stating customary law, and, if not, what exactly is their character as a matter of international law? We shall eventually read the Rio Declaration, but you need not yet; study it as closely as the Stockholm Declaration.)

3/3 Finally, I assume everyone in class has some recollection of the nuclear reactor meltdown commonly referred to as the Fukushima reactor incident, but the details are important, so for purposes of our subsequent Fukushima problem analysis assigned to one student group, I would like everyone to read the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster Wikipedia entry.

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