This important book investigates the environmental legal frameworks, court structures and relevant jurisprudence of nineteen countries, representing legal systems and legal cultures from a diverse array of countries situated across the globe. In doing so, it distils comparative trends, new developments, and best practices in adjudication endeavours, highlighting the benefits and shortcomings of the judicial approach to environmental governance.

Citizen Participation in Multi-level Democracies offers an overview of new forms of participatory democracy in federally and regionally organised multi-level states. Its four sections focus on the conceptual foundations of participation, the implementation and instruments of democracy, examples from federal and regional States, and the emergence of participation on the European level. There is today a growing disaffection amongst the citizens of many states towards the traditional models of representative democracy. This book highlights the various functional and structural problems with which contemporary democracies are confronted and which lie at the root of their peoples’ discontent. Within multi-level systems in particular, the fragmentation of state authority generates feelings of powerlessness among citizens. In this context, citizens’ participation can in many cases be a useful complement to the representative and direct forms of democracy.

Germany's Constitution - the Basic Law of 23 May 1949 - created a democratic constitution which, despite amendments, has held up over the years, even providing the legal basis for German reunification in 1990. When it was written, the Basic Law was initially regarded as a temporary solution which would last until a pan-German constitution could be created, but over the years it has grown to become a mainstay of post-war stability and has even become one of Germany's most successful exports. Foreign scholars are particularly interested in the German conception of fundamental rights and the mechanisms in place for enforcing them in the courts, as well as in Germany's federal structure. Making and applying administrative law and working alongside the system of EU law are also subjects of great interest. This book, developed by a group of scholars in honour of the 60th anniversary of the Basic Law, presents examples of fundamental aspects of current scholarly debate. The analyses found in this book present the latest scholarly discussions, specifically for a foreign audience, touching upon constitutional law, administrative law and the place of the Federal Republic within the system of European Union law, with constitutional law providing the constant framework.

Dr. Ludwig Kr�¤mer, born 1939, retired from the European Commission in August 2004. Dr. Kr�¤mer joined the European Commission in 1972, where he started his career dealing with consumer protection issues in the Competition Directorate-General. He successfully combined his profession as an official of the European Commission with intensive writing and teaching activities. Dr. Kr�¤mer is the author of numerous books, handbooks and articles on EC environmental law. He is an environmental law professor and regularly teaches at several European and non-European universities. In his teaching and speeches, he has inspired his audience and spurred many young people into working to protect the environment. On the occasion of his retirement from the Commission, a group of colleagues and friends decided to honor him with the production of this book, which assembles legal essays on a number of EC environmental law subjects.

On 30 October 2011, it will be exactly ten years ago that the Convention on Access to information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, signed by representative of 35 States and the European Community at a pan-European ministerial conference in the Danish city of Aarhus in 1998, entered into force. This multilateral treaty, negotiated under the auspices of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, represents the most comprehensive and ambitious effort to establish international legal standards in the field of citizens' environmental rights to date. Though some of these standards were inspired by earlier EU environmental legislation, many provisions of the Aarhus Convention went beyond the rights already guaranteed by the EU and compelled the European Commission to propose new legislature acts, most of which were adopted between 2003 and 2006, to bring EU environmental law up to the Convention's standards. Since its adoption over a --