The principle of sustainability is generally taken as a good, but what does sustainability really mean? The notion of sustainability has been at the center of global governance debates for more than a decade and many countries across the world include sustainability in their constitutions. This paper argues that in order to understand the concept of sustainability in a constitutional context, we need to turn to the notion of dignity. The paper explores the concepts of sustainability and dignity and their (...) meanings in the framework of climate justice and related questions and by discussing them in the context of Kantian and republican theory. In addition, the paper looks at intriguing court cases on the importance of nation states meeting their climate law duties. The paper concludes by exploring new uses of the sustainability concept. EU constitutional law will serve as a laboratory in testing these questions. (shrink)

If the state outsources a responsibility to private actors to plant trees, is that necessarily a bad thing? Surely, one would think not. Still, in constitutional theory, there are many forceful arguments against privatisation. One of the core arguments against privatisation is the question of who ought to do what and what it means for a policy area to be inherently public. In this paper, I am interested in varieties of privatisation and in particular what privatisation means in the context (...) of climate change. The aim of the paper is to show that precisely because there is a variety of privatisation, in some areas, such as the environment and regarding climate change, we may discuss the question of ‘duty’ rather than privatisation as such. (shrink)

The Kantian project of achieving perpetual peace among states seems (at best) an unfulfilled hope. Modern states' authority claims and their exercise of power and sovereignty span a spectrum: from the most stringently and explicitly codified-the constitutional level-to the most fluid and turbulent-acts of war. The Public Uses of Coercion and Force investigates both these individual extremes and also their relationship. Using Arthur Ripstein's recent work Kant and the Law of War as a focal point, this book explores this connection (...) through the lens of the (just) war theory and its relationship to the law. -/- The Public Uses of Coercion and Force asks many key questions: what, if any, are the normatively salient differences between states' internal coercion and the external use of force? Is it possible to isolate the constitutional level from other aspects of the state's coercive reach? How could that be done while also guaranteeing a robust conception of human rights and adherence to the rule of law? With individual replies by Ripstein to chapters, this book will be of interest to students and academics of constitutional law, justice, philosophy of law, criminal law theory, and political science. (shrink)