Chapter 4 analyses the three selected challenges facing international tribunals – managing change, reviewing State conduct for compliance with international law, and dispute resolution – in the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s environmental case law. The ICJ has repeatedly adapted aging treaty frameworks given relevant developments in international law and has also faced the problem of change in relevant facts. While the terminology of a standard of review is not firmly established in the ICJ’s case law, the underlying functional problem – concerning the intensity of an international tribunal’s scrutiny of determinations made by domestic authorities – is clearly present. Although three-step proportionality analysis is not entrenched in the ICJ’s case law, the Court has repeatedly used a reasonableness-based test that operates similarly to least restrictive means testing. Finally, the ICJ often adjudicates in a forward-looking, facilitative manner, seeking to assist the parties to manage their relationship after adjudication. Throughout, the chapter reflects on how the ICJ’s practices are shaped by its institutional features, such as its lack of any compulsory jurisdiction.

Chapter 1 introduces the questions the book focuses on and explains its key contributions to literature on international adjudication. It introduces the three challenges facing international tribunals analysed throughout the book: managing change in applicable law or relevant facts, determining the appropriate standard and method of review when scrutinising State conduct for compliance with international law, and contributing to broader processes of dispute resolution. The chapter explains why the book focuses on environmental disputes, as such disputes lack a dedicated tribunal and are litigated across various regimes, and how it defines such disputes. It also justifies the choice of the four adjudication contexts focused upon (adjudication in the World Trade Organization, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the International Court of Justice, and under investment treaties). The chapter also notes certain insights the book incorporates from methodological debates in comparative law, given its focus on identifying and explaining similarities and differences in how the three selected challenges are managed across the four adjudication contexts studied.

With the advent of globalisation and the ubiquity of modern technology, the world has become increasingly interdependent, and a seamless transnational flow of commodities and capital is gradually erasing national boundaries. Constitutional ideas too are not immune from this globalizing force. Mark Tushnet has projected that constitutional systems all over the world will ‘inevitably’ converge ‘in their structures and in their protections of fundamental human rights’. There are multiple pathways to such constitutional convergence. The changes can arise exogenously, for example when new constitutions are imposed by foreign powers on domestic states, or when countries are coerced into accepting constitutional change in exchange for economic or military aid. Other constitutional changes can occur endogenously, for example the domestic legislature relies on foreign materials to amend its constitution, or domestic judges incorporate comparative legal materials when interpreting their local constitutions. This chapter focuses on Asian developments. Specially, it seeks to explain why Taiwan and South Korea – two liberal democracies – are converging with the West on constitutional jurisprudence, while authoritarian states like China and Singapore – deeply suspicious of Western values – remain outliers and have diverged from this cosmopolitan constitutional project.

This chapter explores how proportionality analysis has been incorporated into the case law of the Chilean Constitutional Court and what role it has played in the review of bills that sought the introduction of transformative policies in the country. The analysis contrasts judicial reasoning in cases that are part of ordinary practice and in landmark rulings where important projects of the progressive agenda were at stake. We suggest that, while proportionality has been applied inconsistently in both ordinary and high-profile cases, in the latter, it becomes part of the different strategies that the Court uses to mediate political conflicts. Proportionality works here more as a rhetorical tool than as a method of judicial reasoning, and the outcomes of the cases seem to depend more on the political composition of the Court at the time of the decision, the strength of citizen demand for changes and the influence that interest groups exert on the Court.

This Chapter questions whether there is a “doctrine” of proportionality. By “doctrine,” a way of dealing with problems across a range of problems. Using the country studies presented in this book, the chapter identifies a number of reasons for thinking that there is – and perhaps cannot be – such a doctrine. First, the components of proportionality are elements in any reasoned explanation for an outcome in a constitutional case; as a result, “hints” of proportionality analysis in cases not using its structured version may not in fact illustrate proportionality analysis at all. Second, courts allocate different analytic methods to different domains; as a result, proportionality analysis and categorical analysis co-exist in the system as a whole. Third, something like a categorical analysis is likely to appear at the “less restrictive alternatives” stage of proportionality analysis. Finally, even systems committed to proportionality analysis might find themselves eventually adopting some categorical rules as a means of achieving better results overall than proportionality would produce directly. The Chapter concludes with some observations about the role that structural, educational, and political contexts play in the choice between categorical and proportionality analysis.