In accordance with Article 15 of the Aarhus Convention, the first meeting of the parties to this Convention established a non-judicial and consultative Compliance Committee to consider, among other matters, individual cases concerning compliance by parties with their obligations. The Committee is traditionally viewed as a non-judicial, soft mechanism and its rulings as non-binding, soft law. In recent years, however, to support the claim that rulings of the Committee have an impact and legal effects, some scholars have departed from the traditional perspective and characterized the Committee as a more judicialized mechanism, which issues legally binding rulings.

This characterization assumes a correlation between judicialization and binding effect on the one hand, and legal effect on the other. The latter claim, however, has not been supported by a systematic assessment of the impact of the Committee's rulings on domestic practice. Against this background, the article assesses the impact of Article 9-related rulings of the Committee, issued between 2004 and 2012, on national legal orders. The assessment reveals that in fewer than 41% of the cases parties recorded some degree of compliance with the rulings of the Committee, whereas in 59% they recorded no progress. The quantitative assessment and respective qualitative insights, among other factors, suggest that the normative character of the Committee and its rulings play an auxiliary role in the process of ensuring compliance with the provisions of the Aarhus Convention. The decision of parties to comply is determined typically by the substance of the rulings as they stand in relation to domestic circumstances rather than by the institutional features of the Committee and binding effect of its rulings.

There is a critical research gap regarding the trade and animal welfare interface: we do not know, empirically, what the impact of trade on animal welfare is. This gap exists, in part, as a result of the paternalism of international trade law and the underdevelopment of global animal law. This article addresses, firstly, the collision of dichotomous trade and animal welfare priorities in legal and political systems. It then explores attempts at reconciliation by the World Trade Organization and the European Union. This involves an investigation of the impact of trade on animal welfare. This impact is categorized into four component parts: (i) open markets, (ii) low animal-welfare havens, (iii) a chilling effect, and (iv) lack of labelling. Case studies from the European Union are examined. Thirdly, the article critiques trade law and policy as ill-suited primary drivers of global governance for animals. Global animal law is identified as a promising alternative, although its early development has been unduly affected by international trade law.

This article draws on empirical research conducted with European Commission officials in three Directorates-General and its other services on their perception of how the legislative and policy-making process facilitates the interaction of science and environmental law. This article deploys Sheila Jasanoff's theoretical framework of co-production as an important lens to examine how the European Commission creates this interaction of science and law in environmental policy making and identifies how the Commission incorporates different voices and stakeholders in this policy area. The Commission can be seen as a vehicle of co-production of science and law in EU environmental policy by building strong expert identities, putting in place institutional processes and instruments, and creating discourse between scientists and lawyers leading to outputs of co-production. It is argued that in actively facilitating co-production, the Commission underpins the legislative and policy-making process with its institutional values.

The role of calculative practices such as goals and indicators in international environmental governance causes concern among many observers, who view them as promoting a reductivist approach to the non-human world and privileging economic understandings of environmental governance above all others. Yet they possess enormous potential to provide insights into the non-human world that could be of great benefit to governance. This article takes seriously critical perspectives of calculative practices, while exploring a weakness in much of the critical literature, namely a failure to examine assumptions about the nature of scientific knowledge and the manner in which it is, and ought to be, taken up by policy makers. I contend that both the design of environmental regimes and critical analyses of these regimes bear the marks of the influence, albeit indirect, of early 20th century views on the superiority of scientific knowledge and its unique capacity to ground decision making. I argue that a richer, more nuanced account of the co-production of ecological metrics such as goals and indicators and their potential contributions to ecosystem governance and sustainability is necessary. With such accounts, scholars and political authorities would be in a better position to address the very real pitfalls and dangers of calculative practices while not feeling compelled to forego these potentially powerful approaches.

On 10 April 2019 the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom delivered judgment in the case of Vedanta v. Lungowe, which concerned the liability of an English company for environmental damage caused by its subsidiary in Zambia. The decision confirms that English parent companies can owe a duty of care to foreign claimants affected by operations of their subsidiaries abroad and that the English courts may have jurisdiction to hear such cases, even when a foreign court is a more appropriate place for the trial. It establishes an important precedent for providing access to justice for foreign claimants in transnational corporate liability litigation. Given the global presence of English companies and the fact that their foreign subsidiaries have been involved in multiple cases of environmental damage in the host states, the decision could give an impetus to future claims being brought in the English courts. Also, the decision opens some interesting possibilities for climate change liability litigation against English parent companies and their foreign subsidiaries, as their cumulative greenhouse gas emissions are likely to be considerably higher than when taken separately, arguably making prospective claims against them more viable.

This article examines the complex risks, costs and rewards of large-scale private law climate litigation – the climate litigation ‘holy grail’. It argues that while these cases undoubtedly have heroic aspects, their impacts can be complex or difficult to understand. It uses overlapping theories of metaphor and narrative in law, and theories of private law, to make some critical observations about these cases. Distilling some core reflections from the grail legends, the article argues that success in these cases requires a nuanced understanding of victory and defeat, and more careful thinking about the character, aims, and effect of these pieces of litigation. These stories inspire constant reflection as to what the metaphor of the ‘holy grail’ might mean in this context, and the role that these cases play in the development of a narrative about climate litigation.