This work makes clear what it means that the precautionary principle represents customary international law. Through the analysis of state practice regarding this principle of international environmental law, it answers crucial questions concerning the conditions triggering a right or duty to take precautionary action; the nature and content of such action; the issue areas to which the principle applies; the allocation of the burden of proof; and the role of socio-economic factors. Ultimately, it details what it takes to act in conformity with the precautionary principle under general international law.

This text explores the state of affairs in 2003 regarding the implementation of the principle in the law of the sea in different areas: like, pollution of the marine environment, conservation and management of living marine resources and transboundary transports of radioactive and hazardous wastes.

Responsibility to Protect: Research, bibliography, background. Supplementary volume to the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

This challenging volume contains articles by a wide variety of well-known scholars and practitioners, and deals with human rights, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and humanitarian assistance, as well as other areas of international law relating to the protection of humanity. These are topics to which Flavia Lattanzi, in whose honour the volume is being published, has made an outstanding contribution and to which she has given her determined and unrelenting professional and personal commitment. As a former Professor at the Universities of Pisa, Sassari, Teramo and Roma Tre and as Judge ad litem at the International Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, she has adhered constantly to a number of important principles, as reflected in the research contained in this volume. They include the firm conviction that respect for human rights is an indispensable precondition for durable peace; the notion that grave breaches of human rights, including the refusal to provide assistance to populations in distress, can imply a threat to international peace and security; and that guarantees against human rights violations include the question of the punishment of core crimes under International Law.

The global transmission of infectious diseases has fuelled the need for a more developed legal framework in international public health to provide prompt and specific guidance during a large-scale emergency. This book develops a means for States to take advantage of the flexibilities of compulsory licensing in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which promotes access to medicines in a public health emergency. It presents the precautionary approach (PA) and the structure of risk analysis as a means to build a workable reading of TRIPS and to help States embody the flexibilities of intellectual property (IP). The work investigates the complementary roles of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in order to promote the harmonisation of the precautionary approach in relation to the patenting of crucial pharmaceutical products. By bringing together international trade law and intellectual property law Phoebe Li demonstrates how through the use of risk analysis and the precautionary approach, States can still comply with their legal obligations in international law, while exercising their sovereignty right in issuing a compulsory licence of a drug patent in an uncertain public health emergency. This book will be of great interest to students and academics of medical and healthcare law, intellectual property law, international trade law, and human rights law.

There are thousands of substances manufactured in the United States to which the public is routinely exposed and for which toxicity data are limited or absent. Some insist that uncertainty about the severity of potential harm justifies implementing precautionary regulations, while others claim that uncertainty justifies the absence of regulations until sufficient evidence confirms a strong probability of severe harm. In this book, Levente Szentkirályi overcomes this impasse in his defense of precautionary environmental risk regulation by shifting the focus from how to manage uncertainty to what it is we owe each other morally. He argues that actions that create uncertain threats wrongfully gamble with the welfare of those who are exposed and neglect the reciprocity that our equal moral standing demands. If we take the moral equality and rights of others seriously, we have a duty to exercise due care to strive to prevent putting them in possible harm’s way. The Ethics of Precaution will be of great interest to researchers, educators, advanced students, and practitioners working in the fields of environmental political theory, ethics of risk, and environmental policy.