Environmental Law and Constitutional and Public Law

Abstract

This chapter (forthcoming in Vinuales & Lees (eds) Oxford Handbook on Comparative Environmental Law) examines the relationship of environmental law to public and constitutional law. More specifically, it considers ‘points of interactions’ between public and constitutional law and environmental law and shows that these points of interaction are found throughout the ‘life cycle’ of environmental law. The chapter explores the ways in which environmental law is shaped by rules and doctrines of public and constitutional law, first by discussing policy and law-making in the administrative state. It then analyses constitutional environmental norms and their functions, the local and domestic context of constitutional environmental provisions, the non-constitutional points of interaction between environmental law and public and constitutional law, and how the form and content of environmental law are shaped by domestic structures of government (and governance). The chapter concludes with an assessment of the impact of environmental law on public and constitutional law.

Keywords: Constitutional law, public law, administrative law, rights, international environmental law, governments, relationship between international and domestic law